Beauties that run skin-deep – under $100
As a wine reviewer, it’s essential to go to tastings that give you a chance to check your points of reference. The recent Kemenys Penfolds Lunch was such an occasion: it’s all very well to write derogatory stuff about these fancy wines but you need to check that you’re on the right page first. The GTW Bordeaux tasting was a little more modest, since all the wines cost less than $100.
Bordeaux is the Holy Land and the Mecca for wine lovers rolled into one. This is where the Claret style was born and refined over centuries. In 1152 Henry Plantagenet (later Henry II of England) married Eleanor of Aquitaine and acquired most of western France. Trade with England boosted the prominence of Bordeaux wines, and opened the region to English ownership. That explains the English names appended to some of the chateaux names – Ch. Leoville-Barton for example.
Famous names
The name Bordeaux comes from au bord de l’eau which means ‘along the waters’ and makes reference to the Gironde estuary and its tributaries, the Garonne and the Dordogne rivers which play a pivotal role in the history and success of this region.
As you can see, we have a concentration of great names here that is unique in the wine world:
- Haut Medoc, just south of the Medoc, where most of the grand cru reds come from – Latour, Lafite, Margaux, Mouton-Rothschild.
- Pessac-Leognan & Graves further south, where more grand cru reds come from – Haut Brion – and the region’s best dry whites.
- Further south again on the left bank of the Garonne, we find Barsac and Sauternes where the world’s best dessert wines come from – Chateau d’Yquem among them.
- Between the Garonne and the Dordogne, we find more modest and more affordable names such as Entre-Deux Mers (white & red) and Caddillac (sweet white). The former makes most of the red wine sold under the Bordeaux AOC or Bordeaux Supérieur labels.
- Further east on the other side of the Dordogne, we find St Emillon and Pomerol, home of wines like Chateau Petrus which sells for several thousand dollars a bottle.
Grape Varieties
This was a tasting of red wines, so we’ll focus on red varieties. The short story is this:
- Haut Medoc & Graves: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot
- St Emillion: Cabernet Franc and Merlot
- Pomerol: Merlot and Cabernet Franc, often Merlot alone
- Entre Deux Mers: a mixture of all of these.
The Wines at the Tasting
The thing that struck me was that most of these wines were pretty true to the traditional Bordeaux style, which is elegant and light to medium-bodied with fragrant fruit and fine tannins. They have a finesse most of our Cabernet-based reds can’t match, and they avoid the big alcohols that have become common for the grands crus – more HERE.
Most of the wines came from the 2009 and 2010 vintages, both proclaimed vintages of the century. These warm, ripe years often lift ordinary Bordeaux reds into a higher class and so it was on this occasion: the vast majority of these wines were stylish and high on the drinkability scale. The prices
On the whole, our scores were very close to those of the GTW panel’s. Sadly, the Chateau Bonnet Bordeaux 2010 was one of the exceptions. Sadly because it scored 93 points and costs just $20. We found it a pretty simple drop, easy on the gums but a bit lightweight, and scored it at 88. Chateau du Terte de Cascard Bordeaux 2010 was another bargain on paper, with a score of 93 points and a price of $27. Again, we rated it closer to 89 as we found it a touch bitter.
Chateau Larose-Trintaudon 2010 was another wine of interest as it scored 96 – which put it in second place in the tasting. It’s a wine you could buy for about $40 but the importer was cleaned out pretty quickly following the magazine going public.
