Varietal Wines by James Halliday

Author:James Halliday
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Hardie Grant Books
Published: 2015-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

International Styles

BORDEAUX, FRANCE

France: 54 434 ha

As I have related, Cabernet Sauvignon may have been a relatively recent arrival in what is now regarded as its ancestral home, and from which it spread around the world.

Moreover, it has always been joined by varying percentages of Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and the fast-disappearing Carmenere and Malbec.

It is on the left bank of the Gironde River in the Haut Medoc and Graves that it finds its greatest expression, and in all places it is accompanied by Merlot (the ‘insurance’ grape), and varying percentages of others which fulfill similar functions. Cabernet Sauvignon does not always ripen fully on the left bank (and barely exists on the right bank in St Emilion and Pomerol), but Merlot does, thus making its contribution essential in the cooler vintages. However, the new normal (since 1982) has seen warmer summers coming to the aid of Cabernet Sauvignon, making insurance of little moment.

Modern viticultural methods (notably better control of mildew and botrytis, reduction of the potential crop by shoot and bunch thinning, and a move to organic and, controversially, biodynamic management) and vastly improved winery technology (stainless steel fermentation, temperature control, sophisticated bunch- and berry-sorting tables/belts and, more recently and controversially, reverse osmosis, cross-flow filtration and pumps) have fundamentally changed the dynamics of making Bordeaux red wines based on Cabernet Sauvignon, and led to the belief that (for example) the 2000 vintage in Bordeaux is the greatest ever, followed – of course – by the greatest ever 2005, 2009 and 2010 vintages.

To accept that view, you have to discount the great pre-phylloxera vintages of 1864, 1865 and 1874, and great twentieth-century vintages such as 1928, 1929, 1945, 1949 and 1961. Then you have to decide whether you are comparing the best wines of each vintage or the worst.

What is clear is that the style of Bordeaux Cabernet-based wines is changing, that the problems of the wet years have been diminished, and that the average quality across the lesser chateaux and lesser years is distinctly higher.

I am not going to list the classed growth wineries of the Haut Medoc, simply because they are the subject of countless specialised books.

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