Bordeaux 2020 Primeurs: Appellation Bordeaux
My penultimate set of tasting notes on the wines of the 2020 vintage in Bordeaux deals with all the wines which wear the generic Bordeaux appellation. Normally I present these notes divided into little geographical subzones (from the Médoc, around Sauternes, Entre-Deux-Mers, from the right bank, and so on) but the volume of notes this year suggested to me a simple alphabetical listing might make more sense. So this is what I have done here, in three blocks, one each for white, rosé and red.
In addition, at the very foot of the page, there are a few other wines tagged on here, those from infrequently encountered minor appellations, or indeed from outside the appellation system altogether. Among the former I have notes on a handful of wines from the Entre-Deux-Mers and Graves de Vayres appellations, while the latter are mostly accounted for by wines made from immigrant varieties, often Chardonnay, occasionally Syrah, and in the case of the wonderful Le Retout Blanc a blend of Savagnin, Mondeuse Blanche, Gros Manseng and Sauvignon Gris.
And finally, the primeurs sometimes throw wines from other regions in my direction. A handful of these were sufficiently interesting to report on them here, including a couple from Bergerac, and a second pair from Corsica of all places. All in all I present tasting notes on 105 wines here; this does not include wines I rejected as tired, faulty or oxidised. This is true of all my reports of course, but the percentage of rejected wines was higher in this category that in any other so far published.
