Bordeaux 2015 Primeurs: Haut-Brion & La Mission Haut-Brion
The tasting at Château La Mission Haut-Brion is usually a busy one. Busy in terms of wines poured, busy with eager tasters. I was surprised on arriving, directly after my tasting at Château Pape-Clément, to find the château looking rather deserted. Usually there is someone waiting to direct you at the cusp of car park and château. If I had been a novice I would have been all at sea, but thankfully knowing exactly where I was supposed to be I put on my cheekiest face and headed round to the tasting room at the back of the château.
Sitting down with the wines (nine at last count, if I recall correctly) I let those around me engage Prince Robert of Luxembourg (pictured) in some social chit-chat, while I got on with tasting. Having formed my opinions, I then took the opportunity to quiz Jean-Philippe Delmas on the 2015 season here in Talence.
“This has been one of our driest years”, Jean-Philippe told me. “The difference between 2015 and other dry years, such as 2010, 2009 and 2005, was that in 2015 the driest weather ran from April to July, when we would usually expect our really dry weather to come in the summer, in August. We had absolutely no rainfall from June 1st until the middle of July. As a consequence by mid-July we had a lot of hydric stress in the vineyard. Our youngest vines suffered a lot. It was so dry that we asked for permission to irrigate, as the possibility is described in our cahier des charges [the ‘rulebook’ for the appellation] and permission was granted. But then we didn’t do it. We aren’t set up to irrigate, we had permission but we didn’t have the equipment, the pipes, hoses, and so on. We needed to purchase all this. We got as far as irrigating maybe three or four parcels of young vines before the rains came, and suddenly we didn’t need to worry about it any more”.
