Bordeaux 2022 Primeurs: The Rest of the Right
“Hello. We were wondering if you would be able to come to our tasting room to taste some of our 2022 wines.”
I received a lot of requests along these lines – swap out the words ‘tasting room’ for château, domaine, cellars or laboratory (you might think the last one a joke, but the various consultants that serve the winemakers of Bordeaux operate from laboratories) as you see fit. Some arrived in my in-box many weeks or months before the primeurs week, when there was at least a slim chance of me accommodating said request. Others arrived mere days before, when there was really no hope. This one was in the latter group.
“I’m sorry,” I replied. “My timetable is completely full, and has been for weeks. All my days start before 9am, and most don’t finish until after 6pm. I don’t have any free time. Indeed, the only time I have remaining is on the Sunday afternoon when I arrive. My flight lands mid-morning, by the time I have cleared passport control and picked up my hire car I could perhaps be available from midday. But I am sure that is of no interest or use to you.”
“Au contraire,” came the reply. “See you on Sunday.”
So it was that my first tasting of the 2022 Bordeaux primeurs was at the right-bank consultant’s laboratory, on a balmy Sunday afternoon, more than a week before the primeurs proper actually kicked off. It was an instructive first look at the vintage, with a focus on the right bank as you might expect (including a number of the wines included in this report) which immediately turned any preconceptions about the vintage I might have had on their respective heads.
More than a few hours later I re-emerged into the spring sunshine, my first tasting – on day one of fourteen – done.
You will notice, obviously, that I haven’t mentioned Twingo much in this instalment of my 2022 Bordeaux primeurs guide. Well it was day one. At this stage we were only just getting to know one another.
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