Bordeaux 2011 Primeurs: Château Margaux
My experience of the 2011 vintage began in October 2011, with brief tastes of varietal samples at Brane-Cantenac (in Margaux), Lafon-Rochet and Phélan-Ségur (both in St Estèphe). If there is one take home message from Bordeaux 2011, for me, it is that there is absolutely no association between the first very selective taste of an estate’s wine – probably drawn from a single barrel – and the assembled barrel samples shown to the press and trade come the primeurs. This is something I have believed for some time; I have long regarded pronouncements on the vintage from tasting the fermenting must, dressed up as a ‘scoop’ on the vintage, or just looking at the condition of the fruit on the sorting table (it happens!), with a very cynical eye. So when the primeurs arrived, and I found the assembled barrel samples presented in April 2012 remarkably different to those tasting samples of darkly coloured, juicy, vibrant, fruit-rich and undoubtedly embryonic wines presented in October 2011, it was rewarding to have my beliefs confirmed (or my erroneous prejudices reinforced, if you’re a believer in ‘must reviews’).
Margaux, was another château that showed its wines from 2011 very early, as individual varietal samples, but this time not in Bordeaux but in London. This was at the tasting of Château Margaux experiments held in February 2012, where assembled luminaries from the press and the wine trade were shown Margaux’s second and third wines bottled under different types of screwcap, as well as cuvées from vines farmed biodynamically and organically. I was there too (less luminary, more lunatic I suppose – my day consisted of five hours on a train, three hours of tasting and five hours on a train again). It was a long day, but worth it; I commend Paul Pontallier and Château Margaux for being brave enough to allow outsiders to taste a selection of wines from their ten-year research programme.
