Bordeaux 2015 at Two Years: St Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classé
Having tasted a large number of wines from St Emilion for this 2015 Bordeaux report at two years of age, it made sense to divide my coverage of this appellation into two, just as I do for my en primeur reports. And so I begin two days of St Emilion here, with a look at the wines of the premier grand cru classé estates in the 2015 vintage, including all four châteaux ranked at the class A level.
Readers probably do not need reminding that 2015 was a broadly successful vintage thanks to some glorious summer weather, which finished with two final flourishes of rain. The rains in August were fairly uniform across the entire region, and they were very useful in bringing tired vines, some of which were beginning to suffer in the warm and dry conditions, back to life. Then came the September rains, just as harvest approached. These rains were much less uniform, hitting some appellations and sparing others. Those appellations that took rain in September, in particular the central and especially the northern appellations of the Médoc peninsula, suffered a diminution of quality. Those that did not, however, produced their best wines since the marvellous 2010 vintage.
The St Emilion appellation is, without a doubt, in this latter group of ‘spared’ appellations. The quality of the fruit at harvest was remarkably high, and also very homogenous. As I mentioned in my introduction to this report, Pierre-Olivier Clouet and his team at Château Cheval Blanc found that almost the entire harvest was of grand vin quality. It has been said by many who have reported on the vintage that no fruit was declassified, although that is not quite true; as two parcels were rejected. Two parcels do not provide sufficient volume to create a blend for a second wine though, and so the fruit went into the third level wine, which is sold off, and no second wine was produced.
