Bordeaux 2021 at Two Years
The 2021 vintage saw some sense of normality return to Bordeaux.
Not a sense of normality in the growing season, which provided a series of challenges to be overcome, a contrast to the more successful and benevolent seasons enjoyed (rather than endured) in 2018 (putting to one side the memory of that year’s mildew, as it all turned out well in the end), 2019 and 2020.
And it was not normal in terms of Covid-19 either, 2021 being only the second vintage to take place since the emergence of this novel virus. By this point we were all becoming accustomed to the various restrictions imposed in response to the pandemic, but let’s not pretend life was back to ‘normal’.
But one aspect of the 2021 vintage was very normal. For the first time since the 2018 vintage I was able to travel to Bordeaux for the primeurs to taste the wines in situ, and to meet and talk with the people who made them face-to-face. I never thought I would find myself describing the primeurs circus as being representative of ‘normality’, but I was glad that this time there was no avalanche of samples arriving on my Scottish doorstep for me to process in readiness for review. No more wondering what to do with an ever-growing mountain of polystyrene and other environmentally-unfriendly packaging material. And no more disdainful looks from the apparently abstemious staff at the recycling centre as I unloaded the third boot-load of empty bottles in the space of a fortnight.
Instead, I went to Bordeaux, and saw that not even a pandemic could dissuade the Bordelais from doing what they do best during the primeurs; which is making sure their most photogenic horses are out in the vines, ready for the arrival of the world’s wine press.
