Bordeaux 2018 Primeurs: St Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classé
Many years ago (well, all right, a few years ago), I made a schoolboy error in my primeurs timetable. I kept a free slot in my schedule so that I could call in on the UGC tasting in St Emilion, which was being hosted by Château Soutard. Hurtling down the long driveway to the château at the appointed moment I was taken aback by the lack of vehicles parked outside. These tastings are really popular, and there are usually cars parked everywhere, around the château and vineyard. I swear some visitors would squeeze their hire car into the gap between the rows of vines if there was even the slightest indication it would fit. Hint: they don’t, not even the diminutive Daewoo Matiz. And no, before you ask, I haven’t tried.
Approaching the château I could also see that the marquee, erected to welcome visitors and to host them for lunch, was in the process of being dismantled. And then it dawned on me. The UGC tastings had finished yesterday. I was too late. Cue a brief sequence of unscheduled visits to various châteaux explaining that I had missed the official tasting, and could I possibly have a quick taste of their wine? Well, I say ‘sequence’. The number of visits I managed to make in the time I had left was…..one. Thanks to Château Figeac for letting me taste. But that was back when checking out the 2013 vintage, and you might say any opportunity to miss out on tasting those wines should be grabbed with both hands. Not so the 2018s though, this being a hugely successful vintage for this grouping of exalted premier grand cru classé estates.
Happily, on every subsequent trip to Bordeaux I have managed to avoid repeating my error, and so ever since that primeurs trip I have been able to stick to one of my unwritten rules which is to never turn up unannounced during the primeurs. It’s not very professional. It is a rule I broke with my 2018 tasting trip though, so my thanks go to Juliette Bécot at Château Beau-Séjour Bécot and the aristocratically named Aymeric de Gironde at Château Troplong-Mondot, both of whom squeezed me in despite us not having agreed upon a mutually agreeable time. During the course of my visits I also called in on Château Ausone, Château Cheval Blanc, Château Pavie, Château Angélus, Château Canon, Château Canon-la-Gaffelière, Château Figeac, Château Pavie-Macquin and Château Valandraud, otherwise known (purely for the purposes of the primeur tastings of course) as Jean-Luc Thunevin’s garage in St Emilion.
