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Every year a group of experts assemble to taste through the Bordeaux vintage that celebrates its tenth birthday. This “Ten Years On” blind tasting has been a fixture in our calendar for over 30 years. Our chairman, Stephen Browett, attended his first one in 1992 when the great 1982 vintage was assessed in its youth. We hosted the Ten Years On tasting of the 2016 vintage at our Battersea offices last month and, as ever, it threw up some surprises. Readers of the Financial Times or subscribers to jancisrobinson.com may have read the following over the weekend:
"A lowly St-Estèphe costing less than £36 a bottle held its own gloriously when tasted blind alongside wines costing more than five times more, being the group’s overall favourite wine from the appellation, trumping heavyweights Châteaux Montrose and Cos d’Estournel."
The Goliath-beater was 2016 Ormes de Pez, a wine that we have tasted multiple times over the past six months. And not only did it win the Saint Estèphe flight, beating Châteaux Montrose, Cos d’Estournel and Calon Ségur in the process, it held its own and more against all bar one of the left bank first growths. No mean feat for a wine that we can offer for a limited time at just £125 per six bottles in bond.
Owned by the Cazes family of Lynch Bages, 2016 Ormes is roughly 50/50 Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with a touch of Canernet Franc and Petit Verdot. Like the best Saint Estèphes, it has a powerful fruit core to match the natural grip of the appellation. The Cazes family pedigree is very much on show, with rich and ripe tannins the building blocks and intense fruit generous yet always cool. It is a more svelte, approachable wine than Lynch Bages and the light savoury tones and integrated structure mean you could open one tonight, though patience will be rewarded. More than anything, the combination of refreshment and depth is disarming in this wine, it is truly delicious yet profound, and all in such an affordable package.
Great vintages of Ormes de Pez age beautifully - you need only look at the 1989 - and the 2016 may be the greatest wine ever made at the estate. Once again, Bordeaux proves that under the right conditions and with the right stewardship, it can produce the greatest value wines in the world, and ones which can age gracefully for decades.
Tasted blind. Glossy fruit and polish with real concentration of ripe tannins underneath. Great purity and appeal. Very rich underneath. Dramatic! Great balance. Dry end. Very long. This one is a long-distance runner. [VGV]
Tasted blind at the Ten Years On tasting. This wine just gets better and better every time we taste it, and among serious competition it was the winner of the St Estèphe flight for the vintage. Deep ruby in colour with ripe black fruit, pipe tobacco, bitter dark chocolate and some cedar, the youthful vigour of fruit remains while the savour of maturity is starting to come through. The palate has the vintage's tannins but not in excess - they are chalky, deep and ripe, complementing the cool and ripe core of dark fruit. It is that core that is really the star, coating the structure and fleshing out through to a peacock's tail finish. Age has given it a slight coffee or dark chocolate edge, but the drive and vibrancy of acidity turns this into lighter notes of cedar and forest floor. A delicious, appetising and very moreish wine, you can drink this now with food. I expect, however, that it will continue to improve in bottle for another decade, and have another 10 or 20 years after that before plateauing at full maturity. An outstanding effort and complete bargain.
