Bordeaux 2014 at Two Years: St Julien
I have been to Bordeaux more than a few times now, and the honest truth is that the memories of some of those trips, and many of the tastings undertaken when there, have now blurred into one grand and fuzzy barrel-sample-fuelled extravaganza. Thankfully, the reports and tasting notes I publish here on Winedoctor serve as a very efficacious organiser of my memories, as well as (hopefully) informing subscribers. I might not be capable of carrying around in my head every judgement made and every conclusion reached on the numerous vintages I have reviewed, but a glance through my many Bordeaux vintage reports soon brings all my thoughts flooding back to me, more precisely than any journal or diary could manage.
Not every tasting disappears into the mental melting pot though. Some stand out, albeit not always for the right reasons, and one example was the St Julien tasting of the 2014 vintage hosted by Château Léoville-Poyferré. Having dashed here from a tasting featuring the wines 2014 St Estèphe and 2014 Pauillac, where I had found numerous interesting and noteworthy wines (especially in St Estèphe) I was suddenly confronted by an array of leaner, more acid-framed and frankly less appealing wines. It wasn’t just that they were lighter in character, but across the board they also showed a rather steely, parsimonious, reluctant character.
This is one of the problems of tasting barrel samples. While critics of the primeurs focus on the purported existence of Parker barrels, on manipulated samples and other imagined practices, the truth is – to my mind at least – the biggest difficulty experienced during the primeurs is sample variation secondary to tasting environment, temperature of the wines, length of time since they were drawn and so on. Palate fatigue (or just whole-body fatigue!) in the taster is another possibility, one you will rarely find any wine writer subscribing too (it is always the rumbling thunder or root day that is responsible for their tasting difficulties). I find problems with samples most apparent at négociant tastings; I can think of one négociant tasting where the wines are always too warm, tasting loose and flabby as a result. And I can think of another where the samples are always pristine, the temperature perfect. I have learnt to devote more time to some tastings than to others.
