Bordeaux 2015 Primeurs: The Pichons
You might think that, having picked holes in the first growths, that would be it for the appellation. We can pack up now, and go home, or at least be done with Pauillac and move on to St Estèphe, or maybe we should head back to St Emilion and start drinking the wines, instead of just tasting them. As it happens, however, this would be a mistake. In doing so, you would miss out on one of the very best wines in the appellation. Indeed, one of the very best wines of the entire left bank.
Château Pichon-Lalande
I always swore to myself that I would never walk over glass floors, usually found in the floor of the CN Tower, the Eiffel Tower and of course the best of them all, Blackpool Tower. Unfortunately it cannot be avoided at Château Pichon-Lalande, the steps up to the first floor tasting room (and also those down into the cellars) being made of reinforced glass. I wasn’t sure if the best technique for making it to the top without the stairs collapsing would be to ascend gingerly, or to bound up as quickly as possible. I opted for the latter, and made it up in one piece, to find Nicolas Glumineau (pictured) at the summit. I immediately began quizzing him on the vintage.
“It was stressful. We had drought conditions until late July, and I had two fears about the vintage. The first was the likelihood of low yields, and this was difficult to manage. The second was the possibility of blocage, the vines shutting down. Then by chance we had rain, three or four periods of rain coming every week throughout August. We had about 20 mm each time, and this really helped the vines. Even so we had some good weather. September was also nice, but we had some rain on the 12th and 13th”.
