Bordeaux 2014 Primeurs: On a Mission
The best way to start your day of tastings is to turn up on time. My appointment at Château La Mission Haut-Brion to taste the wines of this estate, and also those of Château Haut-Brion of course, has a regular 8 am slot in my schedule. As it is quite a drive from my accommodation I usually leave at 6:30 am, meaning I arrive with perhaps 20 minutes in hand. After all, it’s rush hour, so you have to have a little leeway for delays.
This year, however, that simply wasn’t enough time; having crawled along in a traffic jam on the Rocade, Bordeaux’s ring road, for what seemed like an eternity, I eventually arrived for my one-hour appointment 45 minutes late. As a consequence my whole morning ran late, as I wasn’t about to cut any appointment short simply to make up time if it meant giving a wine less attention than it deserved. I suppose I could write that it made for a stressful morning, but it wasn’t the case really; these things happen, and as the morning progressed and I turned up late to every appointment I polished up my ability to apologise in French quite nicely. Besides, the unfortunate individual who had caused the jam – there had been a rush hour accident, the bucketing rain no doubt a contributing factor – was surely having a much worse morning.
I tasted in the company of Jean-Philippe Delmas (pictured), winemaker here, who took over from his father Jean-Bernard a few years ago now. Jean-Philippe reported that the flowering had not been perfect on the two Clarence Dillon domaines, with some coulure. They felt obliged during the wet July to carry out a light green harvest, only on the young vines, on the Merlot most of all. The véraison was slow when it came, naturally leading to heterogeneity in the bunches, and so after mid-August a second green harvest was carried out in order to eliminate later berries and bunches.
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