Ducklings and Swans: Bordeaux 2012 Revisited
But what did he see there, mirrored in the clear stream? He beheld his own image, and it was no longer the reflection of a clumsy, dirty, gray bird, ugly and offensive. He himself was a swan! Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.
– The Ugly Duckling, Hans Christian Andersen (published 1843)
Nearly 15 years on from the vintage, I remember the 2012 Bordeaux primeur tastings with great clarity. The health of the crop in 2012 had been threatened by rain and rot, rather as the 2011 harvest had been, and as a consequence 2012 was the second consecutive vintage in which the harvest was conducted with an air of panic. As I arrived in Bordeaux a few months later, to check out the vintage for the first time, a large question mark hung over the quality of the wines.
Tasting the barrel samples, the style seemed light, the character of the vintage muted. The Merlots of the right bank seemed to have fared a little better, a little akin to 2008, while on the left bank there were frequent signs that the Cabernets had not quite achieved the desired maturity. All in all, the vintage failed to excite me. I placed it in a pigeonhole alongside 2011, two vintages of quite different styles but neither displaying great promise.
During the course of the years that followed we had to contend with the wines of 2013, a vintage not even deserving of sharing the pigeonhole. I was (and remain) unimpressed by 2014 (it went in alongside 2011 and 2012), but 2015 showed much promise on the right bank, in Margaux and the southern Médoc. It was not until 2016, however, that a vintage of unquestionably high quality came along, the first since 2010.
