One night in Bordeaux

And two days, tasting some sensational 2009's and rather horrid 2003's. By Kate

Two summer days in Bordeaux! There are worse things in the world although it has to be said that the left bank of Bordeaux is one of my least favourite wine regions: manicured to within an inch of its life, with the best of the wines costing ridiculous amounts of money and the superbly elegant, cedar-scented style of old being increasingly supplanted by big fruit and oak concoctions. With precious few exceptions it's the opposite of biodynamic or indeed organic.

What’s to like, frankly?

Happily I am pleased to report that the entire region redeemed itself beyond question with a bottle of 1995 Pichon Lalande drunk at lunch time (but more of that later).

I am here to visit the properties of the champagne house of Louis Roederer, a still family-owned company that have now spread beyond the region of Champagne to encompass Portugal (Ramos Pinto Port) and Bordeaux (Chateau’s de Pez, Haut Beausejour, Bernadotte and, shiny jewel in the crown since 2008, Pichon Comtesse de Lalande) and Provence as well as corners of the new world.

First, De Pez and Haut Beausejour: HB was bought by Roederer in 1992 and Pez in 1995. These are both St Estephe properties although the former was essentially a Roederer creation, patched together from the vineyards of two other estates.   I am usually a fan of good St Estephe as I find it often has a rusticity and corresponding authenticity lacking from the more vanilla smooth examples from elsewhere.

   2004 Haut Beausejour from Magnum was showing very well – elegant with good, fresh acidity and balanced tannins. Oak was perhaps slightly too dominant towards the back, but overall, this was a good mid range claret with attractive plum and liquorice flavours.

A bit surprising as the last few times I have tasted this in London, I have been rather underwhelmed or down right disappointed but this really was good.

There is work being done to differentiate the styles of these two properties still further with the proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon in the Pez being steadily increased with HB remaining the slinkier younger sibling, meant for younger drinking.

2003 De Pez from Magnum: Massive, 13.8% wine. On the whole, I find drinking 2003 claret akin to being sat on by a giant, over-ripe, blackcurrant which has drunk rather too deeply. I can’t imagine anyone finds the idea of that appealing but for perfect clarity let me assure you that it isn’t.

This wine was no different and despite the fact that I generally like De Pez, this was just big and horrid.

The 1999 is infinitely better with ripe, still youthful fruit underpinned by leather, truffle and tobacco. The tannins are taut but elegant, the acidity remains fresh and the length is fabulous. ’99 was a difficult vintage with rain interrupting ripening but I don’t find a trace of this here and the more reticent fruit is, after the monstrous 03, a complete relief.

After lunch, looking out over the vineyards just outside the De Pez Chateau, Charles Fournier, export director of Roederer tells me that they are experimenting with 3 hectares of biodynamic vineyards here and indeed at most of the Roederer properties. Just to see what they think.

Good news!

We tour the cellars after lunch (which was big, meaty and cheesy - none of the cheeses work even slightly with the wines. I eat a lot of bread which, thankfully, is brown.) It is a pretty standard Bordeaux set-up although again, the emphasis is clearly on quality and things are done properly. Or at least properly in this context. Yeasts, sadly, come from a packet but balancing that out is the fact that only 40% of the oak at Pez and 30% at HB is new, which really does show on the wines. They are not bristling with oak tannins or dominated by cloying clotted cream flavours.

We taste the 2009’s, vintage of mass hysteria, and they are both very good – intense fruit balanced by pristine, fresh acidity. Both are mere infants with oak still rather too dominant and the youthful intensity not yet unfurling itself into fronds of multilayered complexity; but that will come.

We are staying at the Chateau at Pichon Comtesse de Lalande (below), the very same built by Virginie de Pichon Longueville in 1850 and latterly occupied by May Eliane de Lencquesaing herself, the Grande Dame who ran the estate for 30 years up until the sale to Roederer.

While Bordeaux may not be my most favourite place, this is pretty fabulous. The grounds are maintained to almost alarming standards of perfection, with verdant grass smooth and springy as a luxury carpet stretching out from the terrace around the pool which looks out over vineyards towards the Gironde river.

The image of that particular grassy loveliness is dealt rather a blow the next morning when, emerging for a walk, I find a man wearing a head to toe protective suit including a full face mask, gloves and boots, involved in the spraying of some substance so noxious, he clearly need that extraordinary level of protection from it.

We meet here for a pre-dinner drink and then move on to dinner in the town of Bages, a place created by Jean Michel Cazes, legendary Bordeaux producer and owner of Lynch-Bages, among others. The entire town more or less is owned by him so naturally we eat in his restaurant and sure enough, he pops in during the meal to say hello to a large table sitting near us.

I sit next to Charles which is quite a pleasure as he is a man with pure classed growth claret flowing through his veins. Born and bred in Bordeaux, his family have been or are involved with a host of top Chateau on both sides of the river and in Sauternes.

He says that he is terribly concerned about the way the market is going, particularly after the 2009 vintage. He feels that Bordeaux will suffer terribly as a region if the top wines simply disappear from the trade, snapped up by the global super rich at the en primeur stage, to be squirreled away for later resale to other super rich people at unfeasibly large profits, or to drink themselves.

We talk also of the lost style of claret. Growing up in a wine family in Bordeaux, he had (and still has, lucky man) access to the cellars that his parents and grandparents amassed, back in the days when even first growths were eminently sensibly priced, particularly when bought young. He therefore has had a lifetime worth of experience of great, truly old bottles, immaculately stored and so in peak condition (relatively speaking) even at 40 or 50 years old. The value and rarity of a palate such as that cannot be over estimated.

He believes that the style he grew up with and still is lucky enough to enjoy is fast disappearing forever. For true lovers of claret, this means wines which, although always showing the vestiges of the structure which will carry them through decades in the cellar, have attained a perfumed, pencil-leaded elegance which is an extraordinary pleasure. Bordeaux supposedly often appeals more to the head than the heart but with the really good stuff, there is a level of sensuous complexity which means that it gets you in both places.

With the trend towards making wines which are immediately appealing in youth, stuffed full of juicy fruit and the edges sanded down to gloss, the old style is a thing of the past. These new comers will not age nearly as long or in anything like the same way. True, the old timers were often unthinkable and certainly undrinkable in their youth but few things surpass the magic of opening a bottle dating back to when the drinker was a child or perhaps before he or she even existed, only to find bursts of what it must have been in its youth emerging from beneath haunting aromas of dried fruit and flowers, a multilayered thing of exquisite beauty.

An experience it would be a tragedy to lose altogether.

We drink 2003 Pichon Lalande Comtesse with dinner and although the acidity and tannins here are considerably fresher and more structured than in the Pez earlier, it is still a wine of big fruit.   Too big for my palate.

2004 Reserve de Leoville Barton follows and while a great improvement with elegant ripe fruit, the oak is slightly too dominant – a rather too richly smoky/coffee edge and finish.

Back to the Chateau and my room which, while a bower of chintz, is completely charming and after all, it is not every day one gets to sleep in a building with turrets. I am clearly extremely suited to the life of a princess as I slept like the veritable dead.

Day Two

I got up early and went for a brisk walk through the Latour vineyards which surround the Pichon property (below). Already at 7.30am, there is much activity with workers trying to get as much done before the heat of the day overtakes them.   I am reminded of what I don’t like about Bordeaux. It is the regimented nature of the plants primarily which seems not quite right. I have clearly now spent far too many years in very organic or biodynamic vineyards which burst with a life less organised.

It is fitting though: If modern Bordeaux is more about business than about wine, it is perhaps only right that the plants themselves should seem like obedient drones, regimented to the point of lifelessness. It is a good walk none the less, and the apricots at breakfast are sensational – sweet with that very slightly bitter/sour edge that characterises the best.

We visit Chateau Bernadotte in the morning, a property in the Haut Medoc, on the immediate border of Pauillac which was bought by Madame de Lencquesaing in 1997. She was primarily after the 9 hectares of vines which were actually in Pauillac but it came with a further 38 hectares in the Medoc.   The 9 Pauillac hectares now go into Pichon’s second wine and the idea with Bernadotte is to create a very modern, easy and early drinking style – a very junior wine for the portfolio.

I have to say that I have never liked this wine much and I don’t like it today either. There is something rather superficial and even slightly clumsy about it and while it is very reasonably priced for claret, I simply can’t see the point.

Back to Pichon where we are taken on a whistlestop vineyard tour, Bordeaux style. This means, instead of grubbing around with an enthusiastic grower plunging his hands into the soil so that we can all see how pliable and fertile it is (standard behaviour on most farms I visit), we stand with the vineyard manager and watch a group of very well dressed (albeit in shorts and smart tee shirts), bourgeois looking middle aged ladies who are busily engaged in the very important business of leaf thinning (taking away excess leaf growth to both aerate the vine and ensure that the bunches are exposed to as much sun as possible).

I have truly never anywhere in the world seen such glamorous vineyard workers but in Bordeaux, clearly, this is how they do.

Pichon own 89 hectares in all and produce anything from 150,000 to 190,000 bottles of their top wine in a vintage. (TOP WINE only note. That does not include the second wine or indeed anything left after that which is sold off in bulk.) I always find the quantities of Bordeaux faintly astonishing. It is not that good wine can’t be made on this scale but, apart from very, very few Chateau, these kinds of volumes can and do lead to startling inconsistencies in quality, even while prices seem on an unstoppable upwards trajectory.

Back to the winery where we are greeted by Gildas d’Ollone, a man with a fabulous name and pretty wonderful hair, who is the General Director here. We get the grand tour which takes in the very extensive barrel cellars steeped in the smell of wine and wood. Probably one of the reasons that Pichon is consistently a favourite of mine is the fact that they only ever use 40% new for the top wine.

Giles is a fount of wisdom where the history of Bordeaux is concerned (historical founts are always my favourite) and shows us a painting of the once very busy port of Pauillac from whence producers shipped their wines up to Bordeaux. There, negotiation would ‘work’ them by bulking them up with a slug of Hermitage or perhaps something from even further south before sending them out into the world.

It is very interesting to note that before 1962 almost all wines from here were bottled by the merchants, and not the producers. Today, of course, everything is done at the cellar and over the course of 15 days. In previous decades huge inconsistencies in wines from the same vintage were often a result of them being bottled over the course of a year or even longer. Time moves too fast now and for once, that is a good thing.

We taste first the 2009 Reserve de Comtesse which still ridiculously youthful on the nose. On the palate, the tannins are elegant and supple despite their youth and there is excellent acidity balancing out the intense fruit and spice. The oak is still too dominant on the finish but that is to be expected at this stage, and despite it an impressive hint of minerality shows through.

The 2009 Pichon Lalande is completely amazing. Muscular but still supple tannins, joltingly fresh acidity with intense perfume, pencil lead and ripe fruit.   The length is amazing and despite the youthfulness, there is development on the palate – lots of minerality in the mid palate and on the finish which is what clearly sets is apart not only from the Reserve but also from everything else we have tasted in the two days.

We move back to the Terrace by the pool and watch as an enormous P & O ferry glides smoothly down the Gironde in front of us. It is utterly decadent but I don’t mind too much.

Talk is again of prices with Latour currently charging 1200 euros for a bottle of 2009. Gildas makes clear that Pichon has never tried to follow the first growths in prices, unlike other super seconds – Ducru Beacaillou being the most recent example. The number of millionaires and indeed billionaires in the world may have increased at really nothing less than an alarming rate in the least 5 years but still, there must be a semblance of sanity somewhere. Gildas feels that Pichon, with their current prices, are at the limit of what their traditional customer base can take.

Any higher, and it all goes East.

He has witnessed first-hand the drinking of claret mixed with Seven-Up and Coca Cola in that other world. While it does good to remember that we are just dealing with wine that, however it is drunk, eventually all comes out the other end as urine, tales of these bizarre cocktails do fill me with horror. It is not so much the desecration of great bottles because frankly, we just have to get over that. It is more what is said about a culture that is changing faster than we can imagine. Billions of people are not even close to understanding that they have arrived at the party just as the lights have gone up, while those who had the best of it are staggering around in pretty bad shape.

Undeterred, the newcomers want everything that to them symbolises the celebration, without understanding or appreciation, and at any cost, at a time when the planet can ill afford the assault.

That is utterly chilling.

Talk is also of R Parker’s recent tweet about the current prices of the 2009 vintage being ‘consumer carnage.’ Frankly, the irony of that hardly needs to be explained but he is referring specifically to the American market, where sooner or later they will have to come to terms with the fact that the obese new kid on the block is capable of consuming everything that they have come to think of as theirs, and then some.

It's all too depressing for words really.

Thank God then for 1995 Pichon Lalande at lunch.    Quite simply, a sublime wine and one with all the hallmarks of what the best of real old school Bordeaux is about. The most amazingly intense nose of perfume, pencil lead and still youthful fruit. Utterly perfect tannins on the palate – there but somehow not there. Perfectly balanced but still fresh acidity and the flavours – oh, the flavours! Cedar, sandlewood, cinnamon; a veritable spice box overlaid with fruit and mineral.

This is amazing wine and a good reminder of why Pichon are among my all-time favourites. Complexity and elegance, vintage after vintage, and in the good years truly superlative.

Apparently, 1995 was an exceptionally good Cabernet Franc vintage which would explain the highly lifted, perfumed aromas.

So, while it will never be a favourite place it was good to be reminded that Claret can still impress the socks off me when it is good. And that bottle and indeed the visit was exceptionally good.

While this is not my world of wine and not one I am remotely interested in joining, it is good to visit it from time to time. I always return to my little corner happy to be home and even more determined to get the word about the alternative great wines of the world out.

Jan February 2012 Mar

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One night in Bordeaux

Jan February 2012 Mar

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