Changes and Surprises

Mssr Duroux,

What changes in the world of wine (not limited to Bordeaux) have surprised you most in the last ten to fifteen years? Thank you for taking the time to be with us.

Several thinks: there are less and less bad wines, there are more and more wine producing area, there are more and more wine lover from everywhere. After a sad period where everyhting had to be cab, overripe, overextracted and over oaked, finess+elegance+complexity+personlity are back.

Do you attribute the overripe style to the preferences of certain popular wine critics, to whose palates this was preferable?

Or partly as a result of warm climates, say 2000, '03, '05, '09 and '10?

How would over-oaked be a result of a climate?

And overripe comes from over oaked?

:wink:

My post was a question in reply to your post, which only mentioned over-ripe . . . .

Amen. It is sad to see so many California and Bordeaux wineries lose the harmony that made them so good in the first place. I am very glad you guys have never gone there.

Well, it would be easy to say that popular wine critics are responsable etc… but I don’t see it this way.
In the old days, it was not easy to get fully ripe fruit every year, rather because the climate was not good or because the wines where not properly grown. In the 80’s winemakers like Michel Rolland influenced a lot Bordeaux showing that it was necessary to get ripe fruit to make good wines. It helped a lot…; But as usual we saw extreme interpretation. It became kind of a race: who will harvest the latest!!
On an other side, we also have to admit that it is sometimes easier to understand concentration than finesse and balance…

Over-oaked has nothing to do with the climate. It is just to much new oak used for a single blend. Remember, not that long ago several wineries liked to use 200% new oak!!!