Bordeaux 2019 at Two Years: The Rest of The Left
Having completed my run-down of the major left-bank appellations, it is time to get stuck into all the remaining wines produced on the Médoc. And I really mean all the other wines. In this one all-encompassing instalment, I report on the wines of the 2019 vintage in the two remaining communal appellations, Moulis-en-Médoc and Listrac-Médoc (which I was once content to gloss over, but within which quality seems to be ever-increasing), and the two much broader appellations of Haut-Médoc and Médoc, both of which have long thrown up wines of interest.
In truth, there is one category of wines I have chosen to exclude (so not really all wines after all), and that is anything with the basic Bordeaux appellation (as well as a lone but noteworthy example of Vin de France). I seem to encounter so many wines utilising this appellation these days that it makes sense to gather together all my white, rosé and red Bordeaux tasting notes in a separate instalment, to be published at the end of these series of reports, just before I finish up with Sauternes. So if you have are wondering where the tasting notes on the dry whites from Château Margaux, Château Cos d’Estournel or Château d’Yquem are hiding, now you know.
There are a lot of wines here, so there choice, but happily there is also quality and affordability. These are wines that can age surprisingly well; I am still drinking the 1989 vintage from Château Chasse-Spleen, and a 2010 from Château Sénéjac I drank last year, in the midst of a sea of 2018 samples, was a wonderful not-quite-mature reprieve from all those young samples. And coming back to the vintage at hand, I should also mention the delicious 2019 Château de Villegeorge I have already reported on; a historic château ranked at the very top of the Cru Bourgeois classification in 1932, it seems the wines of this estate have still ‘got it’.
