Bordeaux 2014 at Two Years
Reviewing the most recent vintages in Bordeaux has given the jobbing wine writer slim pickings during the course of the last few years. It feels like a long time since the undeniable joys of the 2009 and 2010 vintages, the hedonist’s yin and the classicist’s yang, came our way.
The 2011 vintage was complicated by a cool summer and a warm and humid autumn, producing wines of variable quality. The good ones at least have some substance to them, unlike the majority of wines made in 2012, when the harvest was split by rain, and the picking of the Cabernet Sauvignon was prompted not by the arrival of a sweet and desirable ripeness, but by the wave of grey rot that began to sweep through the vineyard. The best wines have purity, but they also feel delicate, a reflection of these troubles.
It was only natural that everybody – technical directors, critics, drinkers, wealthy proprietors – would have their fingers crossed for 2013. Any hopes of a great, good or even half-decent vintage were dashed, however, by the worst growing season in perhaps three decades. The buds broke late, the summer was warm but not warm enough, and autumn brought high levels of humidity and an attack of rot that prompted a frenzied harvest; it made the troubles of the 2012 vintage look rather tame in comparison.
There is only one good thing you can say about a vintage such as 2013, a year when – as I have stated before – the wines on the whole warranted declassification, and should have been sold off under the second label in the vast majority of cases (yes, they are that grim). And that is this. From a low point like that experienced in the 2013 vintage, things can only get better.
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