Bordeaux 2024 Primeurs: Pessac-Léognan, Red
Twingo crept along the Cours de Verdun. We were snarled up in a midday traffic jam, in the centre of Bordeaux.
I had spent the entire morning with the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux (or just UGC, for those short on time), under the watchful eye of François-Xavier Maroteaux, the organisation’s recently installed president (so I had been on my best behaviour all morning).
The UGC hosts two tastings for visiting journalists. The first is held at the Cité du Vin in the city of Bordeaux, and is run to a strict timetable. Tasters assemble on the ground floor, are blindfolded, and then led upstairs to a secret room before the blinds are removed. We sit at a row of small desks to taste, an arrangement which brings back memories of my O-level and A-level exams, endured in the school sports hall too many decades ago.
Here in the Cité du Vin the invigilators – sorry, I mean sommeliers – patrol the tasting room, their boots click-clacking on the linoleum floor, their sense of menace reinforced by the gigantic metal tastevins – each one the size of a dinner plate – suspended around each neck. Anyone who lags behind the tasting schedule, or who mutters anything negative about the wines, the vintage, en primeur pricing strategies or about Bordeaux in general can expect to hear the whish of the tastevin slicing through the air, followed by a sonorous clang as it makes contact with the back of your head.
Obviously, it is a privilege to be invited.
The second journalists’ tasting is held in a luxury hotel, somewhere nearby. Or possibly a salacious strip club, I’m not really sure, but I have heard it said that this is the case. You get your name up in lights on the door (although I hear budget cuts, consequent upon poor en primeur sales of the 2023 vintage, have reduced this to a hand-written card). Either way, tasters are made to feel like Hollywood A-listers, which could potentially be the highlight of the primeurs week.
The wines are poured by high-ranking sommeliers who cater to your every whim. While armed with the same gigantic tastevin, here it is filled with old vintages of Château d’Yquem, and as soon as a taster appears to be flagging the tastevin is pressed to his or her lips, allowing the dedicated wine critic to lap up a little of the rejuvenating elixir. By the way, rumours which I first heard last year – that there is a ‘butler in the buff’ option – have turned out to be false. It’s not an option, but is in fact mandatory.
Well, so I’ve heard.
“So, which group were you in?” asked the spirit of primeurs past, manifested in the form of Taylor Swift, from the back seat.
I avoided answering the question, instead shifting uneasily in the driver’s seat as we crawled along towards our next appointment. I tried to rub away the tenderness on the back of my head, where the tastevin had made contact. Several times.
“Thought so,” she concluded. “The losers’ group.”
A short while later we arrived at Château La Mission Haut-Brion, to taste the wines of this estate, as well as those of Château Haut-Brion. As I eased Twingo into one of the privet-lined parking bays I noticed a sleek black limousine parked at a jaunty angle. At the wheel, its driver was enjoying a sly forty winks.
