Bordeaux 2014 Primeurs: St Julien Tasting Notes
Although a touch less impressive than St Estèphe and Pauillac in 2014, there are still some attractive wines in St Julien in this vintage. It is not an intrinsically weak vintage for this appellation; the wines are fresh, flavoursome and show plenty of ripe tannic structure. What they lack is typical for the vintage, in that they do not have the stuffing that would have come from a warmer summer, they lack the texture and presence of wines from a truly great vintage. But they are good wines, better than 2013, 2012 and 2011 I feel (and this is true of all the Médoc I think). They sit somewhere closer to 2008 in terms of presence, cool and fresh on the palate, but with a riper and more convincing flavour profile.
If terroir wins out in St Estèphe, Pauillac and St Julien then logically Château Léoville-Barton and Château Léoville-Poyferré should be next under the spotlight after Château Léoville-Las-Case, and indeed these are very good wines. The 2014 Château Léoville-Barton is classically restrained, cool with a velvety backbone of tannins, while the 2014 Château Léoville-Poyferré has a denser, richer, smoky, dried-fruit character, perhaps immediately more impressive than its counterpart, although it is not in my opinion the better wine for it. Working on the same level though is the 2014 Château Branaire-Ducru, a fresh and succulent wine with a touch of cherry stone to the fruit texture, something that you do find here and there in this vintage. It is a very elegant and restrained effort from this château.
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