Bordeaux 2015 Primeurs: St Emilion Grand Cru Classé & Grand Cru
Moving on from the exalted realms of the premier grand cru classé wines, I come now to the other wines of St Emilion. Or, to be more precise, a small-ish selection of them.
Not that small a selection though. The number of wines from the St Emilion appellation I tasted this year has climbed yet again. Last year, weighed down by too many notes from this appellation, I cleaved my usual St Emilion primeurs report in two, starting with the aforementioned premier grand cru classé domaines in part one, concluding with a more manageable number of wines from the grand cru classé and grand cru ranks in part two. This year, enamoured with the style and quality of wines coming out of this particular corner of Bordeaux, I tasted as broadly as possible. And as a consequence, the number of wines in this half of the report has swelled to nearly ninety wines, not far short of double the number I tasted last year.
Tasting so broadly and extensively does bring some advantages of course. There comes a point, surely at some moment before reaching wine number 89, when you cannot ignore the messages the vintage is giving you. One feature of the vintage that came through loud and clear here was the value of Cabernet Franc (and to a lesser extent, perhaps Cabernet Sauvignon, and maybe the other peripheral Bordeaux varieties such as Malbec as well) in this vintage compared to Merlot. As I have already recounted in my review of the St Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classé wines, together with some words direct from the mouths of Pauline Vauthier, David Suire and one or two others, this was a vintage when the right-bank Bordelais saw equal value in both their main varieties. Tasting the wines, however, it is clear that in 2015 (as we also saw in 2009 and 2010) the Merlots have tended towards very high levels of alcohol. This was something that was already a concern as early as my visits to Bordeaux last October, when one right-bank winemaker (I have conveniently forgotten who it was) let slip that a number of parcels of Merlot were picked with potentials over 16%.
