Bordeaux 2015 Primeurs: Château Palmer & Château d’Issan
I left the refined majesty of Château Margaux behind and headed over to Château Palmer. The proximity of the two estates is such that less than two minutes after leaving the former I was already parked up at the latter, and heading on foot for the tasting room. Indeed, readers who are familiar with the locations of these two neighbouring châteaux will perhaps wonder why, at two minutes, it took me so long to get from one to the other. I have an excuse; there were roadworks, with a traffic-light-controlled contraflow system directly outside Château Palmer. As I trudged across the gravel Thomas Duroux (pictured) spotted me heading in from the car park and we turned into the cellars together, setting up on a tasting table hidden among all the barrels.
I had a feeling after tasting at Château Margaux that this could be a very good, maybe excellent vintage for the Margaux appellation, and success has been determined at least in part by the rain in 2015. I asked Thomas about the weather during the season.
“We had no little or rain during June and July, except for a little rainfall at the end of July. Then in August we had approximately 70 mm, which is really average for the month. We were lucky in September, because in this month we had only 30 mm, making this the driest region of the Médoc. The dry weather during July was good for the phenolic concentration in the grapes and wine, while the weather during August was good for giving freshness to the wine. The good weather we had in September worked to complete the ripening and give more precise tannins. The wines have higher alcohols than we saw in 2014, and lower than usual acidity. Nevertheless there is a nice concentration to balance the alcohol, and the tannins are ripe and pure. We were able to build the structure in the wine a little more than we would usually do. The wines and barrel samples both have 14% press wine, a marker of the ripeness and quality of the vintage”.
