Bordeaux 2022 at Two Years: Margaux
Having not long landed at the airport at Mérignac and driven north, where else should I start my tastings of the 2022 vintage in Bordeaux but in Margaux? And having arrived in the appellation, where else should I go first but to Château Margaux itself?
I pulled into the property’s gravel-strewn car park with a few minutes to spare, and brought my rental Fiat 500 to a stop. Parking was achieved without reversing into any walls (not something I can say of every visit undertaken during this trip – but I have become a dab hand at making cosmetic repairs to hire cars over the years), and leaving my car behind I soon found technical director Philippe Bascaules, and we headed up into the rather sparsely furnished first floor room above the Margaux cellars to taste.
Keen to hear about the vintage – well, it was the first appointment of a two-week tasting marathon – I asked Philippe for his opinions on the vintage now he had coaxed the wine through the élevage and bottling. Was it really as great as it seemed to me when I tasted the primeur barrel samples?
Philippe replied thus:
“I should tell you what our cellar master told me. He has been making the wines here for decades, and before he was in post it was his father making the wines. The son’s career goes back to the 1980s, while the father was here for decades before that, and they tell me they have had one great vintage in each generation; the son made the 1986 vintage, while the father made the 1961. But now I see 2022, and I think this might be our generation’s great wine. The tannin levels in 2022 went above the limit I am personally used to, and I had to consider doing something differently – an early décuvage, for example – but I decided I should respect the vintage. So I continued, and so today I have new benchmarks for tannin and for quality.”
