Bordeaux 2014: Winter
Having parked up at Château Sociando-Mallet on April 2nd 2014, a little over a year ago, I set off with my usual fast pace towards the chai. I was at the domaine to taste the 2013 barrel samples, perhaps also to take another look at the 2012 vintage, and then hopefully to nip upstairs for lunch. The Gautreau family usually put on an informal but hearty spread served in the first-floor dining room where the verandah enjoys splendid views across the vines and the broad and murky waters of the Gironde estuary. I much prefer this style of lunch to the lazy dinners favoured by some visitors to Bordeaux during the primeurs; time is tight, and there are so many châteaux to visit I find the best lunch is a swift and functional one.
And then, still en route to the chai, I caught sight of something remarkable in the vineyard, and was stopped in my tracks.
The weather during March running right into the primeurs tastings in April 2014 was mild, warm even. There had been three days of rain in the first week of March, but then came sixteen days of clear skies, with eleven hours of sunshine recorded almost every day, the rain only returning on the 21st. Total rainfall was above average for the month, but hours of sunshine were up on average, and the average of the highest daytime temperatures was 16.1ºC, a full degree above the thirty-year average. As a result along the length and breadth of the Médoc the vines were in bud, the first tiny polyps of pink and green thrusting forth from the branches which, only a few weeks before, had been subject to their winter pruning. Here at Château Sociando-Mallet, however, despite this being my most northerly appointment (further north means lower temperatures, so the vines should lag behind their counterparts in Margaux or Graves) things here were clearly much more advanced. The buds were fully open, and fresh new leaves were already unfurling. “These must be young Merlot vines”, I though to myself. But when I asked technical director Vincent Faure I was informed they were in fact Cabernet Sauvignon.
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