Bordeaux 2013 at Two Years
Great vintages are easy to write about, as I was reminded earlier this year when I revisited seventy wines in my 2005 Bordeaux at Ten Years report. What a deliciously fabulous tasting that was! What about more difficult years though, or indeed totally disastrous vintages such as Bordeaux 2013? Is there any point? Isn’t its fate already sealed? It may be an enjoyably macabre process, but perhaps we should really just move on, in the same way that we really all should stop rubbernecking at motorway accidents?
To prejudge a wine, perhaps influenced by a sneak peek at the label in the midst of a blind tasting, is one of the worst of the wine world’s misdemeanours. To prejudge an entire vintage is a greater crime. Even in the weaker vintages of the past two decades, such as Bordeaux 2007 and Bordeaux 1997, there have been wines worth drinking. Indeed, being open-minded towards such vintages facilitates the discovery of real gems. If you were blind to them it means you missed out on 1997 Château Poujeaux and 2007 Château Brown, two wines which have consistently thumbed their noses at slaves to the vintage and given the rest of us some delicious drinking experiences in the process. The discovery of these wines was simply a matter of approaching them without the prejudice which comes from reading the date on the label.
Ergo, in any lesser vintage, there is always the hope of an unexpected discovery, of finding a wine worth drinking among all the dross. Or perhaps we will discover that the vintage’s reputation is completely wrong, and that in fact there are many great wines waiting to be snapped up (well, we can all dream).
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