Bordeaux 2012 at Four Years: Pauillac
Looking back a few years to the primeur tastings of the 2012 vintage, the transition from St Estèphe to Pauillac meant stepping from convincing wines of ripeness and texture, to wines much leaner in style. They tended towards a more taut style of fruit, red fruit rather than black, reflecting a less convincing ripeness. They were richer in acid, which served to underline this style, and one or two showed grainy tannins of questionable ripeness. There was even a streak of green in one or two. Some weaker wines reminded me of off-vintage Cabernet Franc from the backwaters of Saumur, and I wrote as much in my report.
Coming to these wines again after four years, I approached them without reviewing my old reports before going to taste. This is mainly because I believe to do so would only introduce bias, as I would then seek to reaffirm previous findings. It is better to approach the wines unfettered by such preconceptions, which are after all based on nothing more than weather reports and barrel samples, and not a single finished wine.
And what did I find here? Almost exactly the same as I describe above. The wines are dramatically different to those offered just across the appellation boundary in St Estèphe. They are lean, red-fruited, occasionally a touch grainy, occasionally a little green and dilute. At one point I muttered to myself some of these remind me of Saumur in style, perhaps from a less favourable vintage. You can imagine my surprise when I went back to my primeur reports and found essentially the same conclusion, already written there.
