Bordeaux 2013 at Four Years
A long dining room, with wood-panelled walls so dark they seemed to draw the very light from the air. Glass-fronted cabinets, each one filled with a million silver tastevins, presumably all that remained of a long-lost race of sommeliers. And the carpet, a gently faded red, but dotted with golden motifs that shimmered a little more confidently than the ferruginous weave beneath. And of course two long tables, draped with white linen, on which stood a host of bottles wearing famous labels.
It was all feeling very familiar. Well, almost all.
Indeed, there was one thing that was conspicuously different about the 2017 Institute of Masters of Wine annual Bordeaux tasting, held as always in the ancient rooms of London’s Vintner’s Hall. It is an event which usually throngs with eager tasters, critics, merchants and masters alike. Having attended for many years, I am accustomed to a hubbub in the room; sometimes it is the wines that are being discussed, but more often than not it is an exchange of gossip, a dissection of the current state of the market, or perhaps greetings between old wine-drinking friends who have not set eyes on each other since, in many cases I suspect, last year’s Bordeaux tasting.
But not this year. The attendees were much fewer in number than usual. Those that had showed up made a few conspiratorial mutterings here and there, building to a whispered dirge, but it never really broke through the otherwise cadaverous silence. The atmosphere was one of a sparsely attended funeral, one which had attracted only those most dedicated and devoted to the deceased. Everybody else, it seems, had found some excuse in order to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Anywhere but this tasting of the 2013 Bordeaux vintage at four years of age.
