Bordeaux 2014 at Two Years: Haut-Médoc & Médoc
I took a drive up to the Port du Goulée on the Médoc peninsula a few years ago. It is a very different landscape to the traditional view of the Médoc. There are some truly grandiose châteaux, and there are vines here too, but this is perhaps where the similarities with Pauillac or Margaux end. There is no gently undulating blanket of gravel, the soils more commonly cold and damp, or even sandy. And the vines eventually peter out, to be replaced by scrubby gorse and other hardy plants which can survive in the salt-laden Atlantic breezes. It feels cold, a little desolate even.
Desolate it may be (to be fair, it gets a little cheerier in the summer) but there is good terroir here, if you look for it, and there is the opportunity to produce good wine. The team at Château Cos d’Estournel know this only too well, as this is where the Goulée vines are planted, the vineyards running up the gravelly slopes of long silted-up micro-islands. Aymeric de Gironde and Dominique Arangoïts have made significant investments of both time and money here, and they continue to improve the vineyard. Recently they undertook a huge changeover from Cabernet Sauvignon to Merlot, achieved by top-grafting. Merlot always ripens well here in Dominique’s view, whereas Cabernet Sauvignon is less reliable in this regard, and needs help from the soils. They have planted some Cabernet Sauvignon, to make up for what was top-grafted over to Merlot, but only on the very warmest soils and slopes, at a density of 10,000 vines per hectare. Their efforts in the vineyard seem to translate through to the quality in the wine, which is surely one of the best values in all Bordeaux.
