Bordeaux 2013 Primeurs: Château Margaux
The tasting at Château Margaux this year was in the orangerie which is the oldest building on the estate (built 1763), predating the grand château upon which construction began, under the orders of the Marquis de Colonilla, in 1810. The reason for this change in venue was exactly the same as at Château Latour, where I have tasted the barrel samples in the old stables for the past two vintages; Château Margaux is currently a building site, Paul Pontallier and Corinne Mentzelopoulos having concluded that the estate would benefit from new winemaking facilities (for the white wine, specifically) as well as a new underground cellar to store the library of older vintages. And so I tasted in very pleasant surroundings, under the drooping leaves of palm trees (so shouldn’t that be palm house, rather than orangerie, then?). Or at least I think they were a type of palm tree. I’m not Hugh Johnson, you know.
The story of the vintage here is typical; there was rain during spring, disrupting the flowering, hitting the Merlot hardest. There was some catch up during the summer, and the fruit which had been heterogeneous in its ripening started to homogenise. There was optimism after the beautiful summer weather, but then came the rain, the humidity, and the most extensive attack of botrytis seen in decades. The picking began before it was ideal, starting with the white varieties from September 19th to the 27th, and then following with the reds on September 30th, finishing these on October 11th. As usual I restrict myself to talk of the reds here; I will look at the white wine (along with many other wines made under the generic Bordeaux appellation, from Cos d’Estournel, Lafleur and others) in a later instalment.
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