Bordeaux 2011: Vintage Report
Last week saw us head down to Bordeaux, with the rest of the wine trade, to taste the 2011 vintage. After the back to back successes of 2009 and 2010 there were lower expectations for the wines this year. The vintage was affected by a peculiar growing season; summer in April and May and spring like conditions in August. Yields were significantly reduced and a lot of work had to been done in the vineyards to ensure a clean crop of grapes.
Overall the vintage can be described as a far more classic style of Bordeaux with lower levels of alcohol and less upfront, concentrated fruit. The general consensus among producers was that the vintage most resembled 2001 and 2004 and we can see many similarities with both these vintages. As many drinkers will know the 2001’s are delicious now and the 2004’s are coming on well so this is not a bad comparison. As always in this type of vintage there were successes and failures so it’s important to do some research or to take some advice before buying. We felt the most successful appellations were, Pauillac, St Julien and Pomerol, although there were some excellent dry white produced in Graves and in general this was a very good year for both sweet and dry whites.
So far so positive but here comes the ‘but’, none of the above matters a jot if the wines are released at unrealistic prices. After the price hikes in ‘09 and ‘10 the chateau will need to reduce prices significantly in order to encourage any of us to buy. In terms of the magnitude of reductions in our view they need to be released at 40-50% below last year’s prices, this would put the wines at a similar price level to the current prices of 2001 and 2004 which we believe is justifiable.
So as usual it’s a wait and see game, in the meantime here is a list of our favourites, which assuming prices are right, we would recommend to our clients:
St Julien
Ducru Beaucaillou
Leoville-Barton
Langoa-Barton
Gruaud-Larose
Clos du Marquis
St Pierre
Pauillac
Grand Puy Lacoste
Lynch-Bages
Pichon-Lalande
Pichon-Baron
Latour
Pomerol
Conseillante
Vieux Chateau Certan
St Emilion
Cheval Blanc
Angelus
Pavie-Macquin
Graves/Pessac-Leognan
Smith Haut Lafitte Blanc
Domaine de Chevalier Blanc
Sauternes/Barsac
Rieussec
Doisy-Vedrines
Suduiraut
Guiraud
Other wines worth a mention: Calon-Segur (St Estephe), Montrose (St Estephe), Brane-Cantenac (Margaux)
