Don’t have the subscription. But would love to know what her top 5/10 were.
Well, not so sure what should say! Right bank she really liked Le Pin, Ausone, Lefleur and more. Left bank Mouton, Ducru, LMHB, Montrose……as examples. Lafite and Lynch bages, and more…
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LPB has uploaded some info on the tasting to her Instagram account, not a platform I am on, so I can’t see the content.
This got posted today.
Makes me feel like I jumped the gun on a case of HB. I probably wouldn’t have bought it had I waited for this.
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This certainly comes across as being quite negative. The austerity and tannins do make tasting 100 plus wines very tough, and I think the author said as much in his write up. I also think that the tannins make this an incredibly hard vintage to taste after only ten years.
The only wine I have tasted recently of course is the VCC 2014, and still love it as it is exciting and delicious, which is fortunate as I still have so much of it.
I love 2014 VCC too and have a lot of it. I did recently buy 2014 HB, which has pretty positive reviews on CT. I might open one later this year and see how it goes.
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The style is much as we expected – these are wines for drinkers who like Bordeaux to taste like Bordeaux, with bite and muscle integral to the style.
Hmm, does it surprise that I like this vintage as I do? Compare that to many wines from the more vaunted 2015 and 2018.
A simple test for anyone curious about their stylistic preferences, take two normal producers and try them side-by-side:
2014 Sociando v 2015 Sociando
2014 Lanessan v 2015 Lanessan
So the question is, will this vintage evolve more like 95 and 86, or as I first thought on release, perhaps more like 2008 and 2001.
Yes, a bit of a negative read. Certainly more negative than Jane Anson, which may or may not have been from Southwold (she did not say in her article). She thinks many of these wines are “entering” the early part of their drinking window. I need to pull something from my cellar to try to see for myself. BTW, and FWIW, NM’s write-up should be not too far off, and LPB is publishing her article this week.
Note to self, add ‘nascent’ to my boilerplate list of standard wine descriptors and sound more British, e.g. “Putting the château’s natural muscle together with such a structured vintage made this ten year old wine nascent.” 
Not at apogee!
How were the 2001s at the 10 year mark? I recall the 2008s very enjoyable but I don’t recall them being as tannic as the 14s that I’ve had. I do think 14 will turn out to be great in another 10 years but I can’t imagine wanting to do a tasting of 15 of them right now, let alone a hundred.
I understand there is some chemistry behind why some vintages close down and some never do. Ten years sounds about right for a vintage that has yet to emerge from being shut down.
I’m not gonna dispute what they tasted, but going in with expectations of a “throwback” vintage and then being surprised when the wines are tannic and backwards after only 8 years in the bottle speaks for itself. “Ten Years On” would not have been my personal choice as the best occasion to revisit a vintage.
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It is great to have blind tastings/professional reviews that can be objective versus declaring it vintage of the century with ambiguous flowery language. Adds credibility to the industry.
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2014 is not a generous, or showy vintage, It is more popular on this board than with most people. That does not mean you will, or will not like it. You are going to need to pop a cork to find out for yourself. Personally, I do not own any. But, as I pointed out, a lot of the people on this board enjoy them quite a bit.
FWIW, I like the team at Farr Vintners, and often find we agree on Left Bank wines.
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I’ve not written up a report on this tasting yet but I left disappointed. Going in, I was enthusiastic and quite excited, but I just couldn’t find much in the way of excitement and it was concerning that it was only a minority of wines that felt like they needed more time. I wouldn’t be waiting for many 2014s with optimism.
Of course, there were certain wines that stood out for the right reasons - VCC, LMHB, Calon, Mouton - but there was nothing that made me want to grab my Amex and buy it. And nothing I regretted not buying.
Afraid I just can’t convince myself that 2014’s anything more than decent at best.
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OTOH, the 2014 wines were priced well, and for those of us who purchased, purchased well (based on forthcoming experience), hopefully we will be happy. I still have optimism for what I have- Montrose, GPL, ducru, P. Lalande and a few others
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Being earlier in my wine collecting career and later comparatively to the Bordeaux party, I had considered 2014 an opportunity to backfill at reasonable prices. It seems my efforts might be better suited elsewhere.
2016 is still generally available and while it’s priced higher, seems safer.
I appreciate this is too much data crunching for some people but I thought I would share it given the discussion on 2014 Bordeaux vintage (and often thread creep into Bordeaux vintages more generally). If you guys want to nerd out, I can make a separate thread.
So here is an analysis of roughly 25000 CT notes on Bordeaux Reds in the past 3 years. There are many ways to cut this data, 2018, 19 and 2020 would be in top 5. If you were to only look at vintages with 5+ years of bottle age, top 5 Bordeaux vintages since 1980 will be 2009, 2016, 1990, 2010 & 1982. It’s also interesting to see how sharp of a drop off there is once you go past 1989.
2014 wouldn’t be in top 10.
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Interesting to see the drop off after 1989 in the last two columns of data. How easy would it be share the csv?