Bordeaux 2015 at Ten Years: Left Bank
In this, the first of two sets of tasting notes on the wines of the 2015 Bordeaux vintage revisited at ten years of age, I focus on the left-bank appellations, taking in Pessac-Léognan, St Estèphe, Pauillac, St Julien and Margaux.
Thinking back to earlier encounters with these wines, I have a strong memory of prior tastings, from the primeurs, but even more so from the two weeks I spent whizzing from one château to the next in December 2017, to retaste the wines shortly after bottling.
The solid nature of this memory is noteworthy. While there are critics who claim to remember every wine they ever tasted, how it tasted and with what score they anointed it, after twenty years of regular visits to Bordeaux I sometimes struggle to remember individual tasting trips, never mind individual wines. I readily confess memories of my many trips are now largely blended into one, long, never-ending tasting marathon.
But not this vintage; I remember that trip in 2017 to retaste the 2015s.
Having been seduced by the wines of the right bank, I made my way over the Pont d’Aquitaine to the left bank appellations, where I found what could only be described as a mixed bag. The disparity in quality was striking; there were some excellent wines, but also some that were rather ordinary. And some about which I found I had little positive to say. This was clearly a vintage with a complicated story and I wanted to tell it. There were wines worth buying, but also some worth avoiding.
It was the ideal vintage in which to operate as a critic. Not near-universal success and a green light to buy (like 2010). Not a near-universal flop and a warning to avoid (like 2013). Instead, it needed picking through, appellation by appellation, wine by wine. A complex vintage which I enjoyed writing up as I began to understand its variations and disparities, which I perceived was different from how some saw the vintage. It made my reports distinctive and useful, and that is after all the intent!
So, coming back to the wines at ten years of age, how does this vintage look now?
