Bordeaux 2018 Primeurs: Pessac-Léognan, White
Moving on from my review of the red wines of Pessac-Léognan in the 2018 vintage, it is of course time to check out the corresponding whites. To be presented with these wines during the course of my primeur tastings is often a joyous moment. In a sea of red wines, the palate soon begins to crave something different, and the opportunity to switch to white wines for an hour or two is always very welcome.
Having said that, quality has been up and down here in recent years, and warmer vintages which have been very beneficial to the reds have not necessarily done the whites any favours. As I noted very recently in my review of the 2015 Château de Cruzeau, warmer weather can produced wonderful and sometimes rather exotic flavour profiles, shifting from the citrus and orchard fruit characteristics we might reasonably expect to find in white Graves and Pessac-Léognan into the more tropical realms of mango, pineapple and guava. That in itself is not a problem. What is more of a concern is that such warm growing seasons can rapidly push down the acidity levels in the grapes. This is just as likely to be as important in the 2018 vintage, a growing season finished off by a warm three-month drought, as it was in other warm years such as 2016 or 2015.
I have already alluded to the character of the dry whites in my 2018 harvest report and 2018 broad impressions, and I shall now expand further on those initial thoughts.
The Pessac-Léognan Story
The warm conditions towards the end of the growing season naturally led to an early harvest for the whites. In general the picking of the white grapes for dry wines in Pessac-Léognan began before the end of August, with Château Haut-Brion and Château La Mission Haut-Brion starting on August 27th, Château La Louvière and Château Couhins-Lurton kicking off on August 28th, and even Château Pape-Clément was underway before the end of the month (just), the harvest starting here on August 31st. As an aside, the difference between the climate to the south of Bordeaux in Pessac-Léognan and that to the north, up on the Médoc peninsula, is nicely illustrated by later picking on the Médoc, such as at Château Cos d’Estournel, where the first grapes for the white wine (from vines up at Goulée) were not picked until September 8th.
