Yeah, the sample we were shown EP was from a very creamy/flashy barrel, whereas the bottled version is much more harmonious and integrated.
I didn’t want to pollute the thread so I thought I’d start another. This would appear to be one example of the EP blend being rather different to the final one. In this case, I’m guessing that the property misjudged the critics’ tastes and corrected their work accordingly. Obviously this opens quite a large can of worms. Back in EP’s halcyon days, it was very much frowned upon to even suggest such practices took place, but we live in more enlightened times today.
Are EP samples anything like the final blend?
Do châteaux make one EP blend, or do they try to tailor blends according to the critic? Increasingly critics are visiting châteaux rather than taking part in mass tastings so in theory, this could be done - I can imagine the team thinking - “Oh, it’s so and so, rack up the oak” or “This one doesn’t like blockbusters, let’s give them a fresher sample”.
I’m not against the idea of EP per se, it provides a useful PR opportunity for châteaux, but the idea that ratings of embryonic samples can be relied upon by consumers for investment decisions has always seemed a little odd. If the samples are not even close in their characteristics to the final product, what on earth is the point?
An interesting question Julian. One that fired up the memory banks. I remembered Edmund Penning Rowsell saying something about samples in his book The Wines of Bordeaux, 6th edition page 191. He states that Lafite had to take back the 1928 as being " not up to sample" following a court case. That was however sent to merchants, rather than critics. Clearly an unrepresentative wine can be subject to action if it was the basis of a commercial transaction. It at least shows that this is potentially a practice that has been questioned for a long time. Since I have never had any EP samples I will leave it to others to comment on current practices.
I have to ask, how long was it between the tasting of the EP sample and of the final bottled version. Could it be that the wine changed and not the makeup? Unfinished wines are not bottled and sold yet for a reason.
I have never tasted that much Bordeaux from barrel, but I have had a number of Burgs that taste very different from barrel (or even from first release) than they do a year or two later. Most recently, I tasted several 2017 barrel samples when I was in Burgundy in 2018 where the wines tasted very different (and much better) when I had the wines (in some cases the same wines) at the Paulee Grand Tasting in 2020.
It really depends on the estate and their practices. When you take a sample, even if the blend was made when the wine went into the barrels, every barrel will be a bit different. You can, quite reasonably, try to pick the barrels that are the most “representative” of how you think the wine will turn out. But there is an element of the luck of the draw, especially with wines that are very young, low in sulfur, and being tasted in changing atmospheric conditions.
Slightly off topic, but isn’t the case sometimes when visiting wineries and tasting out of barrel? The barrels chosen are oftentimes done so to ‘show off’ certain characteristics that the final blend may not have, or at least may not be as amplified? For instance, if you taste a sample out of a new barrel but the final blend only contains 25% new?
In Bordeaux, very few estates pull from the barrel. You almost always taste from a freshly pulled sample. Tertre Roteboeuf is unique in that they let you choose the barrel, or barrels you want to sample.
In the Left Bank, most wines are fully, or almost fully blended by April. In the Right Bank, most wines are blended later, just before bottling. That being said, there are barrels that show better than others. It’s easy to understand why chateaux pick the best barrel for the tastings.
Some estates pick barrels they know that are better suited to one taster over another.
FWIW, only once did I firmly believe a sample from a top estate was much better than the bottled wine purposely.
I would imagine there’s about 15 months or so between the EP sample and the final version, which of course means there’s plenty of time for the wine to evolve in the barrels. Obviously you’re quite right that an unfinished product is just that.
Yes, fair enough. Bearing in mind how many different barrel makers are used, the variations in toasting, etc, quite apart from the varied plots, there must be luck involved everywhere.
There’s something quite magical about actually tasting from barrel. It has only happened to me a few times but they’re great memories.
I can understand the temptation to choose the best barrel, or worse still, one barrel over another depending on the critic, but that does rather undermine the credibility of EP.
Huge can of worms, but not having been to Bordeaux for several years, I am not sure if some of my observations are still correct.
Malo in barrel. Tends to be common practice now, but fifteen years it was considered to be difficult, risky and annoying, so very few people did it. At the time, however samples often came from malo barrels, because they represented the finished wines better, or so we were told.
In some cases full assembly has not been done, so the choice of barrels might be representative. Or not.
Sample collecting is sometimes hit and miss, and I have tasted a few wines that were out of condition. I tried remedying when there was time, by going to the chateau.
This all being said, when I recasted the wines from bottle, very rarely did I find that the sample and the finished bottle were far apart.
One thing I am very curious about, if some of the people who tasted can weigh in.
When Covid hit, and now you have had a chance to taste in bottles; did you find the wines that were shipped to you less reflective of the finished wine than previous years when you tasted in Bordeaux?
Not exactly with barrel tastings. That’s why you have parenthetical scores instead of final ratings. And when possible, it is always best when you can taste the wine more than once, in different conditions. There are quite a few variables that also come into play, glasses, temperature of the wine, the weather (high or low pressure), the pull, the barrel, amount of sulfur, the mood of the taster, and the mood of the wine. Plus the actual date of the tastings. For example, barrel samples change almost daily, and can improve rapidly over a period of days, or a week, or two.
Most of the time I’ve found that wines tasted in barrel score in the middle, or at the top of the range, with more wines than usual scoring above the range in 2022.
Wasn’t there a passing suspicion during one of the COVID EP tastings that at least one big name chateau was tailor making samples to different critics? I think it was ultimately proved innocent but the question cropped up?
I do not think the Tronquoy 22 WK upgraded rating is a case of any sinister practices
If you think / read back this started with the Tronquoy-Laland 16 getting high praise by @Robert.A.Jr and @William_Kelley and the ensuing thread drift towards the 22 Tronquoy, with the question on the 22 rating coming up where William was much lower (89-81) than other critics. So William clarified his lower rating back then:
WK: FWIW, I saw Vincent Decup of Montrose, one of the most brilliant technical directors of Bordeaux, who intimated that while my commentary described the sample I had tasted, that sample had been taken from a barrel that was showing its new oak quite aggressively the day that I visited. So hopefully it will perform better in bottle.
So IMHO this is more about differences between barrel samples. Kudos to William.
Can one draw similar conclusions from vins clairs tastings in Champagne, where you are really tasting the building blocks, but not the finished product?
WARNING - Comments like this can get you sued - but probably only across the pond. When RMP suggested 30 years ago that he was given better wine to taste at Faiveley than was sold in the US . . .
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by William or any other critic. They taste what the châteaux give them to taste. The only question raised was whether or not what they taste is representative of the final product: it would seem that sometimes it is, but not always, and that not all critics taste the same samples. Whether or not all that constitutes a valid guide to buying an expensive wine is for each of us to decide!
This year’s EP campaign is likely to be fairly low-key anyway, but I wonder whether or not some of the publications are questioning the time and money involved, and whether those resources could not be put to better use.
