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Bordeaux 2011 En Primeur Blog #1

Saturday, 31st March 2012 by Stephen Browett

Today the Farr Vintners tasting team assembled at Gatwick Airport for our annual trip to Bordeaux to taste the latest en primeur vintage. This year it's the turn of 2011 and after 2 monumental vintages - 2009 and 2010 - we have the feeling that this is going to be a hard one to get excited about.

Apart from the entire London sales and purchasing team we are joined by Colin Hampden-White, our brilliant photographer, Jo Purcell (who flew in overnight from Hong Kong) and our two "wise men", Barry Phillips and Derek Smedley MW. Barry is, of course, somewhat of a guru and father figure to Farr Vintners. He was the man who got me into fine wine - over 30 years ago! - and we are incredibly privileged to have Derek with us on his 50th consecutive Bordeaux en primeur trip. Yes, it's amazing but true, that Derek's first en primeur tasting was in the spring of 1962 to taste the 1961's out of barrel. What an incredible honour it is - especially for the younger members of the team - to have him with us, offering his words of wisdom and experience.

Derek Smedley MW gets stuck into his 50th Bordeaux En Primeur Tasting.

Our first stop was a massive negociant tasting of over 200 wines! We really were spoiled for choice. As this was the first tasting of the trip we spread out and tried to taste as many wines as possible to give us a feel of the vintage. Thomas and Mark hit the Sauternes (and seemed to be very impressed by them) whilst the rest of us tried the reds.

These are very much first impressions and most of the wines will be tasted at least once, if not several times, again before we head back to London.

Here is a quick resumé of what we tasted:

- The Pomerols seemed to be very good with lots of ripe flesh. No top Chateaux were tasted but the basic wines seemed very good. Lalande de Pomerol's La Chenade was gorgeous and we felt like sneaking a bottle out to drink on the bus.

- The Saint Emilions - yet again this is a commune full of contrasting wines. Canon was lovely and delicate, Pavie Decesse monstrously concentrated and woody. Some good wines were found in between these two but really Saint Emilion does seem to be all about wine-making and not enough about terroir.

The Farr Vintners Team at Pontet Canet

- Graves - we only tried a few but it was a mixed bag, Fieuzal trying very hard to impress, Domaine de Chevalier quietly under-stated.

- Medoc - it seems clear that in 2011 there are going to be highs and lows. It's certainly not going to be a uniformly great vintage like 2009 and 2010. We are going to have to be very selective with what we recommend to our customers. The best wines that we tasted today could potentially be better than 2008, or even 2001. They could be above the quality of 2002, 2004 and 2006. Others seem to lack the charm and flesh of even 2007 and are really rather lean and lacking in character. Already it seems like this is a vintage in which the buyer will have to be take advice and not buy across the board. We'll have a better picture when we taste them again over the next few days.

The highlight of the tasting? Well it wasn't a 2011, it was the fabulous 2010 Rauzan Segla - this really is looking to be one of the greatest ever wines made at this historic second growth property. The second wine here, "Segla" was plumper than some of the 2011 Medocs that we tasted.

Alfred Tesseron

We then moved up the Medoc to Pontet Canet where we were warmly welcomed by Alfred Tesseron and his niece Melanie. Just when we were thinking that 2011 might be a rather boring vintage we were blown away by the absolutely superb 2011 Pontet Canet. This Chateau really is on fire! After a string of brilliant vintages they just keep delivering the goods. Alfred is honest enough to admit that this wine is not up to the level of his 2009 and 2010 but it is a wonderfully mouth-filling Pauillac that must surely be one of the wines of the vintage. This is somewhere between the 2008 and 2009 in quality and really is a classic Pontet Canet that is a greater wine than anything produced here between 1962 and 1999. If the other top chateaux can produce wines of this quality then maybe we have a very good vintage on our hands after all.

Melanie Tesseron pours Pontet Canet

Some mature vintages of Pontet Canet served with dinner confirmed our opinion that this Chateau (now organic and bio-dynamic) is not just the new member of the "Super second" club but it is a genuine challenger of the First Growths.

Tomorrow we start tasting at 9am sharp with a visit to Léoville Poyferré followed by all the First and Second Growths of the Northern Medoc.

Tagged with: Bordeaux 2011 | En Primeur
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