Bordeaux 2014 Primeurs: St Emilion Tasting Notes
Sadly, beyond the handful of châteaux on which I have cast the spotlight here, nestled in among the great names such as Château Tertre Roteboeuf, this is not a vintage for bargain-hunting in St Emilion. The most appealing wines are largely those from the best terroirs, where there has been dedicated work in the vineyard and the ability to select carefully in the cellar. The well-drained gravel of Château Figeac may well have conferred an advantage, the same may be true of the limestone on the plateau, which has an impressive capacity to absorb water. And wines from these terroirs don’t, on the whole, come cheap.
This is certainly a weaker vintage here on the right bank than it is on the left bank, especially if we look more to St Estèphe and Pauillac on the left bank. St Emilion had a tough time of it during the summer, it was wetter here, and just as cool. I feel many of the wines reflect this less-than-charming weather. Yes, at the top end, especially where Cabernet Franc features instead of Merlot, the wines can be lovely. But in lesser wines, from lesser terroirs, or where Merlot features without a significant lift from a large dollop of Cabernet Franc, the wines can be much less convincing. Much, much less convincing. Some are elegant and perfumed, but lacking a little in structure, perhaps reflecting a reluctance to extract too heavily in a vintage in which the Merlots had good physiological ripeness but a less appealing phenolic ripeness. Where the extractions have gone ahead, many Merlot-dominant wines show a somewhat coarse, more grainy bed of tannin, a great contrast to the more velvety-ripe tannins found on the left bank where Cabernet Sauvignon ripened so beautifully in the autumn sunshine.
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