Bordeaux 2014 Primeurs: St Estèphe
I am delighted to kick off my Bordeaux 2014 regional reports with St Estèphe, not least because here we find one of the small handful of truly exceptional wines that seem to transcend the otherwise cool and crunchy character of the vintage. In fact, we have here my favourite wine of the vintage, and I am happy to publish this now as I don’t seem to have a great track record of declaring my top wine (or wines) of the vintage in a timely fashion. In the 2013 vintage my top choice was Château d’Yquem, but I was hardly unique in saying so; it was everybody else’s top choice too, I think. In the 2012 vintage I thought Château L’Église-Clinet to be head-and-shoulders above everything else, indeed during a morning of tasting some very big names in Pomerol it felt as though it came from a very different, much more favourable vintage. Both Pomerol and Sauternes tend to appear rather late in my sequence of primeurs reports though, and so by the time I made known my adoration for these wines it already felt like old news. This year, then, I’m sticking my flagpole in the ground as early as possible.
Before we come to the wine in question, I consider it important to note that within the St Estèphe appellation this wine is not an aberration. In 2014 St Estèphe is strong across the board. How so, you might ask, when we have already picked apart the growing season, laying bear all its weaknesses, and looked at the less-than-perfect wines that have resulted? It is not just that the Cabernets did better than the Merlots in this vintage, because that would obviously apply to all the left bank appellations, and having tasted the wines it is clear that St Estèphe faired much better than Pauillac, St Julien and Margaux in this vintage. The key, of course, lies in the weather, and perhaps the terroir, which obviously varies from one commune to the next. In 2014, the further north you go on the Médoc peninsula, the better the weather was.
Please log in to continue reading: