Bordeaux 2013 at Ten Years: Left Bank
In this review of the 2013 vintage, revisited at ten years of age, I start on the left bank, taking in the communal appellations of the Médoc, from St Estèphe down to Margaux, as well as looking south of the city of Bordeaux with a handful of wines from Graves and Pessac-Léognan. This means I take in all five left-bank first growths, not to mention leading second growths such as Château Léoville-Las-Cases, Château Pichon-Baron and Château Rauzan-Ségla, among others.
How to describe this little cohort of wines? Well putting the dry whites to one side for the moment, and focusing on the red wines, they are at the same time both hugely impressive, and incredibly disappointing. Hugely impressive because they are at least recognisable as wine, and they are largely drinkable. In a vintage such as 2013 this is an achievement in itself, and is a reflection of the efforts made (and the technologies that were put to use) by the Bordelais. It is safe to say that if a vintage with the same abysmal growing season had come along during the 1960s or 1970s it would have resulted in a much greater loss of the crop, and much less appealing wines.
But they are also incredibly disappointing, because the quality across the board here is very limited. As a group, these are light and lean wines, with delicately evolved flavour profiles, spiced with more than a hint of greenness in many wines, from peppery mint right through to scented garrigue herbs. The structures felt largely resolved when I last tasted this vintage, six years ago, and this naturally remains the case today. Indeed, with fully resolved tannins I half-expected many of the wines to have shuffled off this mortal coil in the interim, so I was surprised to find the majority still hanging on.
