Château Ferrière - Margaux - 2008

WINE TALK
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Back in 2011, a certain Robert Parker wrote this about Ferrière 2008:

“Hard, angular, masculine, lean and austere, this is a wine for masochists to consume over the next 6-10 years.”
That was it - quite a useful note - oh and he gave it 83 points.

Well, it gave me a good laugh as I sipped it last night, two years after the end of the “drinking window”. My youngest daughter just looked at me in astonishment and said - masculine? Yuk! Why did he use to be famous?

Anyway, to the wine:

The nose is beguilingly spectacular, a bouquet of red fruit aromas that fill the room - wild strawberries dominate, with red cherries, redcurrants, roses, ripe raspberries and a touch of vanilla. Just writing about it now makes my mouth water, it was that good. In the mouth, it’s very similar - crushed strawberries at first, then red cherries, with a blend midpalate of damson plums and rosehip syrup, moving to the finale where a little blackberry joins a wave of dusty raspberry.

The mouthfeel is soft and juicy, very moreish indeed, with just enough grip to ensure a good future, but as usual with Ferrière, the really dominant characteristic is the wine’s elegance and finesse. Classically made, with perfect balance and precision, nothing excessive nor vulgar. This is what I look for in a Margaux. They don’t taste exactly the same, but there is definitely a resemblance to Clos du Jaugueyron and Bel Air Marquis d’Aligre.

So has Ferrière suddenly “become good”?! Judging by how the recent vintages are greeted by the cognoscenti today, you would think so, but like so many other older vintages that were panned by critics, the 2008 is just an older, more mature version of the recent ones. I’ve tasted the 2016 and the 2019 - they’re both very good, but not significantly better than the 2008. It isn’t the wine that has changed, it’s just that the wheel has turned.

Back in 2011, RMP gave Lascombes 2008 a score of 93 points and recommended buying it by the case. Each to their own.

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Not yet on the Ferriere bandwagon but there are two in the hopper to try.

Yes, there are a few of us who love these old fashioned traditional bottlings, and we are vocal but a small minority of the wine drinking world. In fact the Berserker community was based on the type of wines you are talking about.

We should be thankful there are still winemakers who make these beautiful long lived wines at the expense of income and critical acclaim. Think about who we have lost in the last few years. Ausone, Figeac, Magdelaine, Canon, Pape Clement, and DDC (?).

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Mark what vintage do you have on deck? I’d love to see you try the 1995 or the 2000. I’m a big fan of this Chateau.

Curious what you will think of the DDC. My guess is that your memories of the past with this estate - like mine with stalwarts like Lanessan, Les Carmes, La Louviere, et al - may challenge your perception. The 2019 is not a throwback to the 1970s at all, but it definitely is not a product of that ugly “modern” period we seem to be exiting from. I liked it. But in this price class, I still think the standout is Durfort-Vivens.

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I have a 2014 and a 2000 due next week.

I think, given climate change, it might be tough for DDC to make the same kind of wine they made in the 1970s. Perhaps in the more classic vintages such as 2008 and 2014, but those were mired deep in Dererecourtitis. If indeed that style of wine has changed, the 2021 might be interesting.

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Ferrière 2000 is a lovely wine. I bought a case EP which sadly I finished recently. I should have kept a couple back as it rarely appears at auction. The 08 is not that dissimilar. Anyway, I’m glad that this type of wine is back in fashion since it will mean that others will follow suit. I get the DDC interrogations, although for me it’s Bernard’s responsibility rather than Derenoncourt’s. When I try Prieuré-Lichine, for example, which he’s been consulting for donkeys years, I don’t find anything amiss - the most recent vintage tried was the 2014, which was very respectable.

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I sometimes wonder of Parker frequents boards and snickers at all the free rent he has in some wine drinkers minds. Counter to most, apparently, I think Parker did wonders for wine world, amd perhaps that is just me coming up, trying to sell wine in a universe that drank beer or didn’t believe there was a reason to pay over $10 a bottle.

Were all the wines he gushed over my style, absolutely not, but to think he changed the style of wine is naive. Greedy Chateau owners looking for higher prices, and fawning over him for better scores made the conscious decision to use RO, pick riper, more new oak, etc…but along the way much of what Parker impacted was paralell to that, forcing wineries to have better viticultural practices, better and cleaner equipment, and more attention to detail throughout the process whether their goal was traditional or modern wines.

I still laugh that mag of CdP comes up anytime a wine recco for sushi is asked for.

Anyhow, just thoughts after a long morning walk on a beautiful spring day.

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I don’t think Parker got everything wrong, far from it, and I’m pretty sure that in years to come when the dust has settled, his record will be positive, but in the case of Durfort, Ferrière and HBL, he just didn’t like Gonzague Lurton and Claire Villars-Lurton. No idea why.

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I can see that, but his job was also to score wines and convey quality based on his palate, which I unequivocally believe he did, to the point of being polarizing and drawing some absolutes for others based on his taste later down the road.

Not old enough to have been around for his reviews on 1982-1996 BDX, but they seem pretty spot onnfor the most part.

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He clearly evolved over time, and not necessarily in a positive way, but evaluated as a whole, his influence can be seen as a positive, I think.

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Bear in mind that 2019 DDC is only 13.2% alcohol and saw only 35% new oak. I felt it was the most transparently terroir-driven wine of what I’ve tasted from 2019.

DDC also chaptalized in 2021 so in that respect it might be closer to the 70’s!

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Positive for whom? I wonder today if it was easier then to have a smaller pool of reviewers with Tanzer, Parker, WS, Burghound vs. today with a littany of reviewers all trying to get their initials on shelf talkers.

At least then you were pro-Parker or anti-Parket based on his palate.

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Positive for me, for sure, and I would posit that net positive for consumers and the industry as well.

Now that statement needs some context.

For those of us that go into wine in the early 1990s, and not living in wine-centric cities like NYC, you really had limited access to information and supply. There was no internet. Wine stores in Orlando, Florida, were overall weak, although ABC did start growing their Bordeaux line. And by the 93/94 timeframe, you did start seeing many of the Classified Growths for sale, along with WA shelf-talkers. That’s how I learned of this guy called Robert Parker. I started to subscribe, bought his tome on Bordeaux, and slowly started to gain knowledge and accumulate finer wines. Parker spoke often then about vineyard practices, weather conditions, shipping issues (he railed on shipping in heat), winemaking practice, and he universalized the 100-point scale, which I still think has merit for evaluating wines (along with detailed notes, of course). The wine industry was better for this back then, and I was as well.

At a certain point he became infatuated with California “cult wines”. I cannot recall when I noticed this or had my epiphany moment, probably around 1999, and felt that his focus and palate had shifted. So I ended my subscription. Ended Wine Spectator as well, after finally realizing Suckling as a clown.

What happened with Parker, eBob, et al, after that, has been hashed out on this Board ad nauseam.

Fast-forward to today, I really like what WK is doing with TWA, and have subscribed for a while now. It adds value to my understanding of wine, winemaking and overall state of the market. A Parker re-birth, perhaps. Or better, as now we have that balanced with a plethora of other knowledge and information, including from this very powerful Board where we are blessed with a true wealth of knowledge and insight.

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Yes, my thoughts entirely - RMP did a huge amount of harm, but before that he did a huge amount of good. I’ve always hoped he’ll get a statue in St. Emilion or Bordeaux - he deserves it and they owe him a lot.

But sadly, that didn’t prevent him from sometimes writing reviews like this one. Of course the upside is that until now, Ferrière has been such excellent value!

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Agreed. The late days on eBob soured me a bit with all the guffaw, but Parker, and that board introduced me to a ton of wines I may never have heard of back then.

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Harm how? Curious. Again, anyone who changed their style to pander for scores deserves the good or bad that came with it.

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whether they are to be blamed or applauded, the argument is that so many producers rushed to please the “Parker palate” that they crowded out more Alfertian wines. The end result was less diversity of styles

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I think we all can agree Parker’s palate changed a lot over the years towards bigger/riper/boozier/jammier/over-extracted/slicker wines, especially post-2000. We might debate just how much his palate shifted, but at some point for a number of us it went too far.

But the bigger “problem” for my palate was when wine makers and owners began crafting their wines to chase Parker points (many, with blatant conflicts of interest, claimed this didn’t happen, but it most certainly did… but let’s not re-litigate all that again) and when pricing became so fine tuned to his scores. So Parker could control both the style and pricing of wine, especially in Bordeaux and probably CA and the Rhône, and a doom loop ensured of ever pricier, souped up wines which might have reached its apotheosis in the 2005 Right Bank and 2007 CdP.

Once this got out of control (for lovers of traditional claret which was once the norm in the 80’s and even 90’s), some of us realized we could still get the few remaining old school wines that Parker ignored or dissed on the cheap, but these slowly but surely caved and hired consultants or got new owners who blew up the style of the wines.

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True, but assuming there is blame to assign here (and I am not sure there is), it isn’t Parker who should get it. He gave wines he liked big scores and ones he did not lower scores. That’s his job. The market/vineyard distortions that followed aren’t his fault. We all might lament the consequences, but that really is not his purview

And personally I am not going to fault a producer who actually wants to make a franc or two off his/her wine. Blame that old invisible hand I suppose.

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Overall, I agree.

If any blame is to be ascribed, I think Parker did a bad job telegraphing the stylistic changes going on. Savvy readers could figure it out but at least some of us kept blithely buying wines we didn’t plan to try for 10-20 years based on Parker’s recs without realizing that these purported jumps in quality (of which he hitherto was a generally reliable barometer of, say, pre-03 for my mileage, before designer wines became a thing) were really just a big changes in style. And when people started (often loudly) pointing this out on ebob, Parker doubled and tripled down that this was nonsense, that these “improvements” were objective changes in quality, not souped style changes (that we’ve all heard about ad nauseum but which were at least somewhat novel info circa in 2000-05).

I am not sure why he was so resistant to admitting this, maybe because it was tantamount to the emperor has no clothes, but I think he was.