Twenty Years On: The 1991 Vintage
During the judging at this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards, it was perhaps only natural – as quite a number of tasters had only just returned from the 2010 Bordeaux primeur tastings – that the lunchtime conversation should turn to this region. Rather than the usual mantra concerning the greed of ever-higher prices, the talk instead centred around the very advanced state of the vines, many of which were already convincingly in leaf in early April. Although such precocity may bring the benefit of an early harvest under clear skies, it also brings a risk of damage from late spring frosts. Jim Budd, who was seated next to me, leaned over and whispered, almost conspiratorially, “It was just like that in 1991“.
Continuing, Jim explained that in the spring of 1991 he was visiting Bordeaux when, on April 17th, the temperatures started to dip, a first warning sign of the devastating frost that was to come. It was several nights later that the thermometers finally bottomed out well below freezing, at around -7ºC, on Sunday April 21st. Although not as severe as the frost of 1956, which killed many vines across the region, this was certainly cold enough to damage the developing buds and leaves. It was succinctly described at the time as a “disaster” by Christian Moueix; the fact that Jim Budd remembers the exact date, now twenty years on, gives some indication of just how much of a disaster it was. In these days of ever-rising global temperatures, when almost every other vintage coming out of Bordeaux is a Vintage of the Century, it seems difficult to even conceive of such a catastrophic event, but in some areas the frost wiped out “between 80 percent and 100 percent of the crop” according to Moueix. And because the replacement buds had a late start, what was harvested was picked late, under an autumnal deluge. The wines were, in many cases, the worst to come out of Bordeaux in recent decades.
There were one or two relative successes – such as Pichon-Lalande, which I scored rather generously when I tasted it at ten years of age in 2001. I wonder whether I would be so generous if I were to taste it today, with ten more years tasting experience under my belt? I suspect I might not. Unfortunately this tasting does not inform in this respect, as I have no more bottles of 1991 Bordeaux in the cellar, neither red nor white (the few bottles of 1991 Coutet I once owned have long been drunk up), so this tasting is devoid of anything from the region, and I will never be able to add a Bordeaux 1991 retrospective to my list of dedicated Bordeaux tastings.
