EN PRIMEUR TASTINGS IN BORDEAUX

A few weeks ago was the “en-primeur”, or, “futures”, tasting of the 2004 Bordeaux vintage. The wines tasted are still maturing in vats or oak barrels, and will only be bottled next year. When tasting wines this young one has to assess the quality of the wines in the “future”. Right now the wines tend to be more tannic and the oak more apparent than will be the case in another year when they are ready for bottling. 

Having just completed the en-primeur tasting of the 2004 Bordeaux vintage, it confirms our analysis immediately following the harvest. Winemakers that invested the time and money necessary in what were most certainly awkward climatic conditions up until the end of August, and who also risked waiting for maximum maturity, produced good to very good wines. Those winemakers, who did not invest the time and money necessary, and harvested before optimum maturity, produced poor quality, vegetal wines. This was blatantly apparent on the left bank where the wines are predominantly cabernet based and therefore have a longer ripening period than the merlot based right bank wines. The cooler than usual conditions in July and August delayed the ripening process considerably. In general, Bordeaux 2004 wines were harvested a full month later than the wines of 2003. I rated Phelan-Segur only 80 points out of 100 this year, finding it green on the nose and horribly vegetal on the palate. This happens when the grapes are harvested well before maturity. The 2003 vintage I rated 87 points en-primeur last year.

Normally French people take their holidays in August, however, in 2004 the winemakers of Bordeaux needed to be in their vineyards to undertake the green harvesting (removal of bunches of grapes from the vines to increase concentration of the remaining grapes) and effeuillage (pruning of leaves to allow grapes increased exposure to the sun to enhance ripening). This is a highly manual, labour intensive activity, and not everybody has the willingness and/or the means to undertake such work. The winemakers that do undertake this labour intensive work definitely do reap the rewards.

When vineyards are small the work can be undertaken by the owners at no financial expense. Jean-Claude Paret of “Chateau La Fauconnerie” worked around the clock in his 7 hectacre vineyard in August; his time spent pruning both the grapes and leaves. However, his winemaking neighbours, who are also my neighbours, were nowhere to be seen and this is reflected in the quality of the wines they have produced.

My overall impression of the vintage is that the right bank wines are definitely superior in quality to their left bank counterparts, and whilst 2004 is definitely not an outstanding vintage, it is still good to very good where the grapes were allowed reach maturity. One needs to be extremely careful however in their selection of wines as those wines that were harvested before maturity can be really vegetal and quite awful to drink. Over the week I must have tasted over 400 wines and rated only a handful in excess of 90 points. The majority of the wines we tasted during the week will not be bottled before May 2006 so it will be interesting to see how they evolve in the interim.

Cheers, Paddy

“Up Cork”

 

  

Paddy O' Flynn, founder of the Wine Buff , has been resident in St. Emilion, the heart of the Bordeaux wine-producing region, for the last fifteen years. A former manager of 'La Tour des Vins', one of the premier wine-shops in St. Emilion, he is perfectly located to report direct from the vineyards.

Rene Baylet, Paddy's father-in-law, is a former recipient of the prestigious award, best wine-producer in France regarding quality/price. Rene's son, and Paddy’s brother-in-law, Richard, is the proprietor of five mobile wine-bottling plants, keeping him in daily contact with the lesser known, smaller producers who manage to produce some of Frances’ top wines.

 

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