Bordeaux 2011 Primeurs: Petrus & Peers
Having looked at a couple of the values that can be found within the 2011 vintage here, it is time to take a look at a handful of the greats. And first up on my tasting programme was Petrus, so that’s where I will start.
The tasting at Petrus was fascinating; normally I taste with Olivier Berrouet, but this year it was Elisabeth Jaubert who poured our wines. And she gave a riveting discourse on Petrus, with her words on the terroir of the vineyard – complete with geological maps – being of most interest. It was a particular disappointment to me that it was at this moment my laptop, clearly still recovering from its unplanned bath at Pichon-Lalande, relapsed into status epilepticus. As Jaubert educated my peers I tried to coax my laptop back into life; first it refused to respond to my key-presses. Then every key-press resulted in literally hundreds of characters appearing on the screen. As a finale, my laptop came out of its seizure but demonstrated psychotic symptoms as it informed me that it was now unresponsive to mobile 3G signals. Huh? It’s a word processor, not a mobile phone!
Happily, although my knowledge of Petrus terroir is now inferior to that of my fellow tasters, at least my laptop was restored to life in time for me to type in my note for their 2011 vintage, even if I did have to subsequently clean up the long strings of extra vowels and consonants that had been inserted against my wishes. And Petrus is a very convincing wine this year, showing no hint of the challenging tannins that have been found the length and breadth of the left bank. It is dark and concentrated, quite muscular, yet perfumed, balanced and integrated, with a lot of hidden substance and power here, the concealment of said structure lending the wine an effortless feel. Its all too easy to wax lyrically about Petrus, of course, but in this vintage the wine certainly deserves it.
