Bordeaux 2021: Broad Impressions
It is clear that the 2021 vintage offers very different prospects to wine drinkers than those found in the 2020, 2019 and 2018 vintages. These recent years have seen Bordeaux blessed with benevolent weather conditions (although 2018 was badly hit by mildew) which guaranteed excellent levels of maturity and broadly homogeneous ripening. In these other recent vintages the late-season work in the vineyard revolved around protecting the fruit and holding back the rising sugar levels in order to keep the alcohol levels in the finished wines in check. Vineyard managers and technical directors protected their crop from sunburn by maintaining a leaf canopy to shade the fruit, and picking as soon as the phenolic maturity permitted. In 2021, however, all this has been turned on its head. This is a vintage in which the Bordelais sought to coax every iota of maturity from the vine, through deleafing, green harvesting, thinning out the bunches and holding on for as late a harvest as was humanly possible.
Acknowledging the story of the vintage, I travelled to Bordeaux to taste the 2021 vintage with an open mind. I have seen what the Bordelais can achieve in difficult vintages, most pertinently in 2017, another frostbitten year with which 2021 clearly has some parallels. And even in 2013, a washout vintage saved by concerted effort and modern technologies, they still made a drinkable (if rather wan and overpriced) set of wines.
So how do the wines taste? Let me pick them apart.
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