Bordeaux 2013 Primeurs: Haut-Brion & La Mission
The story of the growing season at Château Haut-Brion and Château La Mission Haut-Brion is much like that elsewhere, with a cool and wet spring, and difficult flowering. They regard – as others do, and I am sure that they are right – the summer weather as having saved the vintage. As an added nuance, however, the vines were hit by hail in July, reducing the crop by about 10%. This is another very important feature of the 2013 growing season; storms in July and August, some of which wiped out swathes of vineyards principally in the Entre-Deux-Mers. On either side of this central region, however, some vines were also hit by the bad weather, in Pessac-Léognan to the south-west of the Garonne, and in St Emilion and Castillon to the north-east of the Dordogne.
The Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion vineyards tend towards early ripening, for several reasons, including their more southerly position when compared to the vineyards of the Médoc, their tendency to use a greater proportion of Merlot, and also the warmer urban environment, the vines being surrounded on all four sides by the suburban sprawl of Bordeaux. In 2013 earlier ripening should have been an advantage for the reds, although tasting the wines I am not convinced it has had any significant effect on quality. For the whites, as I have already alluded in my introduction, there was no major problem; picking started with the Sauvignon Blancs on September 17th, and continued on with the Semillons, eventually finishing on October 1st. By this time the Semillons at Château Haut-Brion were starting to develop some botrytis, but those at Château La Mission Haut-Brion were in perfect condition. Rotten fruit was, of course, rejected during a rigorous sorting. As with elsewhere, optical sorting – a technology put to good use here in 2011 and 2012 – was found to be ineffective, as the fruit was too fragile and damaged.
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