Bordeaux 2013 Primeurs: Climens & Yquem
The first two tries are of particular importance to the wines, being large in volume (together constituting more than half of the harvest in many cases) and of good quality. These musts and wines were particularly pure and bright in terms of flavour and structure, and it is this picking that constitutes the largest part of most of the wines. As a consequence many wines show a very pure, elegant style, and yet there is no shortage of sweetness and concentration. Other wines also include lots from subsequent third and perhaps fourth tries, and this has produced a style that is more richly concentrated with a greater depth of botrytis and sweetness, but perhaps not the finesse or purity.
Is this a great vintage though, in keeping with much of the hype that has surrounded the white wines, both dry and sweet, in 2013? The answer to this is clearly no, despite the eagerness of some to create some fervour around the sweet wines, probably for all the same reasons I hypothesised in my 2013 Pessac-Léognan report. The quality in this vintage is just too variable for it to be considered ‘great’; this is no re-run of 2001. Yes, at the top end, some of the leading cru classé châteaux have fashioned quite exceptional wines; these are the châteaux who could get organised enough and had sufficient manpower to get picking when the botrytis suddenly swarmed over the vineyards in late September, and to stop and then start picking again in the windows between the rains in October. And then they could select and reject of course, often channelling maybe 10 hl/ha of their 16-17 hl/ha harvests into the grand vin.
At the lower levels though, the wines do not always look so pretty. Some taste a little flat, and generally less convincing. Some have a surprising leaner edge to them, sometimes associated with a saline minerality that would be fabulous in a bone-dry Muscadet, but it doesn’t seem to work so well in the context of a botrytised sweet wine. Others suggest to me that the fruit ripeness was not as ideal as might have been hoped, with a leafy freshness rather than sweet botrytis defining the wines. This style may appeal to some, but I prefer sweet botrytis to be balanced by acidity, not a sense of greenness to the fruit. And a handful show the aromas of flavours of grey rot, proving as always that it takes great skill and dedication to make Sauternes, and if you don’t have your eye on the ball you can end up with some very unappealing flavours.
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