Bordeaux 2012 at Four Years
Unlike vintages which are easy to pigeonhole, such as 2010 (a super vintage, loaded with ripe tannin) or 2013 (the worst vintage in about thirty years, with lots of light and acidic wines), no immediate ‘soundbite’ about the 2012 vintage springs to mind. Four years on, all that I can remember is that it was neither great nor awful; it was one of those ‘in the middle’ vintages. In truth, as someone trying to build up a repository of useful information regarding Bordeaux, these are often the most interesting vintages to come back to. It is unlikely that a report on a vintage at the top end of the quality spectrum, such as 2010 or 2005, or at the bottom end, such as the dreadful 2013 vintage, or weaker years such as 2007 or 1997, would generate any great surprises. But in coming back to 2012 we can perhaps all learn something worthwhile. In such a vintage we can search for those regions or châteaux that may have excelled. We can seek out any wines worth buying, their prices perhaps restricted by the uncertainty as to the quality of the vintage, especially as the collective attention of Bordeaux drinkers worldwide subsequently turned to 2014 and 2015 instead.
This report is based on wines tasted at the Institute of Masters of Wine in London in November 2016. The wines were tasted during the course of one day, and they were not tasted blind. I have added notes on a couple of other wines pulled from my own cellar, to bulk up the volume of tasting notes. The tasting was of considerable interest to me not only for the reasons described above, but for other more personal reasons. First, this was the first vintage I tasted ‘flying solo’ at the primeurs, making all my own appointments, sorting out my own accommodation, doing my own driving and so on, rather than going as part of an organised group. I did this in order to expand my coverage of the tastings week, extending my usual three-day visit to something much longer (seven or eight days is now the norm, barring cancelled flights as I unfortunately experienced earlier this year). There was a downside to taking on all this organisation myself though; perhaps inevitably, I slipped up. I dropped the ball. I was wide of the target. In other words, I turned up at the St Emilion Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux tasting the day after it had finished. ‘Oops’, you might say, although this is definitely not what I said to myself when I realised what I had done. I shall leave my choice of words to your imagination.
