Bordeaux 2013: Winter & Spring
Kicking off my 2013 weather, harvest and vintage report as always in the preceding winter months, December was a relatively mild month, with temperatures several degrees above average on the whole. Both January and February were a little cooler, and overall winter was a little wetter than average, although looking at the big picture there was really nothing remarkable about the winter months. It was not really until March that the story of 2013 began to take shape, and indeed it was the spring weather that, to a large extent, set the character of the vintage.
This was a much cooler March than usual, with the maximum daily temperatures way below the thirty-year average. As a consequence the vines remained dormant for much longer than has been usual in recent years. During my time visiting Bordeaux for the primeur tastings, it has not been unusual to see bud break already underway, kicking off in late March, and by the end of the week I have become used to photographing unfurled leaves, the vines well on their way to developing their full foliage. Not so in 2013; the miserable March weather pushed bud break well back, and things did not really get underway until mid-April at best. The most advanced buds I saw all week were those pictured below, in a vineyard of white varieties (an eclectic mix of Savagnin, Mondeuse Blanche, Gros Manseng and Sauvignon Gris) at Château du Retout. On the red varieties, I saw mere nubbins. The vines were thus, at the very outset, at least two to three weeks behind schedule; with good summer weather some catch-up might be possible, but late bud break means late flowering, means late fruit-set, means late, risky, potentially rain-sodden harvest. The 2013 vintage was already making the Bordelais nervous.
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