Bordeaux 2015 Primeurs: Pomerol
The problem with the story of a vintage, or your weather, or your terroir, is that you can potentially spin it any way you want. Having explored St Emilion in 2015, finding dozens of wines rich in plush fruit and ripe tannins in the process, it is clear to me that this vintage is a very successful one for this part of Bordeaux. This is why, when choosing the order in which to publish my 2015 Bordeaux reports after the primeurs, I began with St Emilion. There are plenty of wines worthy of our attention in 2015, from all over Bordeaux, but those from St Emilion seem especially strong.
Any number of winemakers and proprietors I spoke to attributed the success seen in St Emilion to its limestone and clay terroirs, both the rock and the soil able to act like a sponge, soaking up rain when it was heavy, releasing it to the vines in times of drought. In 2015, with very little rain in April, May, June and July, and in St Emilion in September too, having your vines rooted in the limestone rocks of the plateau and its clay-strewn slopes seems to have been a valuable asset.
We might assume, therefore, that appellations with predominantly gravelly terroirs might be in trouble. After all, one feature we all know of gravelly soils are that they drain well, unlike the moisture retentive clays and limestones.
