From the viticulture descriptions, it seems like the goal is achieving more homogeneity and uniformity across the vineyard through harvest. One hypothesis of wine I’ve seen over and over (which I think I subscribe to) is that some inhomogeneity can be a good thing, and add complexities to a wine that aren’t there with uniformly ripe fruit. Is that a concern for the future of Bordeaux? With these “improvements”, together with climate change, is Bordeaux destined to become current day Napa?
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About to read the article, but I have to say, the RP website design is horrible. You have to scroll all the way down to find this (presumably because it doesn’t include tasting notes?)
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Yes I wonder about this too. William places a very high emphasis on viticulture, but I wonder how well we really understand the relationship between grape inputs and the quality of wine especially after extensive aging which is a mysterious process. Obviously there’s a huge connection but the details of what it is seem like they might be quite complex
In general in a lot of writing, including in many ways this article, there’s a presentation that makes it seem like there’s broad agreement and certainty on what best practices are in winemaking, like it’s an engineering problem as opposed to an art where there are a lot of different stylistic choices to be made, each of which can lead to equally good wines in different styles
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I did not really take it that way, finding the article more a discourse on the changes and trends. I thought it was a good article to lay out what is behind the way the wines are today.
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Thinking about comments on the downsides of mass tastings, I have long thought that the problem with the high-scoring, uber-ripe wines in such affairs is that they stand out from the pack, but when you open one at home after getting corralled in, you learn that it was not for the better.
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Exactly. It’s this purity thing critics seem to harp on (maybe not WK though), why is purity of flavors a good thing, especially if you’re looking for complexity?
Similarly, any efforts to root out pyrazines altogether is totally ill-advised in my book.
That said, most of the rest of William’s interesting and highly educational report sounded quite promising to me, eg less efforts to artificially concentrate the wines, less effort to extract, etc.
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William appears to be using purity to mean without faults that can negatively impact the wine (e.g., brett or volatility).
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This is an interesting question, and one I have wondered about myself in the past. However, it is clearly not the case that homogenous maturity in Burgundy results in a lack of complexity, nor could one say that Yquem, where grapes are picked in multiple passages to ensure homogenous maturity, results in a lack of complexity.
The problem comes when, to avoid any under-ripe grapes, an estate picks the whole vineyard area on the late side, catching everything ripe and some fruit a touch over-ripe. That results in flatter, less vibrant wines; wines in lower definition, if you like. I touch on the fact that for many estates and consultants in Bordeaux, this was the path of security, as wines with a touch of over-ripe fruit tend to get rated well en primeur, whereas if you take the risk to pick earlier and miss a parcel, anything green or herbaceous is likely to be punished.
Precision comes by breaking up an estate into coherent blocks, with vats adapted to the size of those blocks, then picking each block at optimal maturity for that block and its vine material. Each vat will then be the best that it can be, resulting in the best possible blending components.
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I started on that last year: Robert Parker Wine Advocate
My new colleague Yohan Castaing has a follow-up piece on the satellites of the right bank coming out very soon, with exactly the same approach (we have tasted some of the wines together), and a lot of depth on the appellations and what makes them interesting!
This is going to be a regular feature going forward, rather than loosing wines like these in vast En Primeur or “In Bottle” reports that cover the whole region and all the most collectible wines.
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The idea of the article was indeed to give an overview of what, after an awful lot of tasting, vineyard visits and winery visits, I tend to think is best practice in contemporary Bordeaux. But more than that the objective was to survey some of the challenges and problematics that producers are engaging with. The approaches will evolve with time but it is the way of thinking that it’s important to capture: e.g. how to avoid making ripe wines taste richer and creamer via élevage choices; how to avoid too rapid oxidative development in bottle; how to avoid the austerity of under-ripe grapes without the unpleasant flavors of over-ripe fruit.
In any case, warm thanks to everyone on this thread for struggling through the full 5,500 words, and for all the nice comments! It’s truly appreciated and has made my day. Especially if it provides some context for, and renewed interest in, contemporary Bordeaux.
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This is high quality wine journalism and a paean to Bordeaux winemaking. Thank you William Kelley.
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We could be brothers, separated at birth.
I will concede you got the better palate from Dad, I clearly got the good looks from Mom.
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@William_Kelley thank you very much for an interesting and informative article. Any insight you can provide on your plans (or lack of them) to cover the ‘20 and ‘22 vintages in the coming months? Thank you again!
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William, how do you think wines made today, with this increased attention to harvest optimization, will compare to the greatest wines of decades past? Should we expect to drink something quite different 30 years from now, compared with the mature wines we’re drinking today (leaving aside climate change, of that’s even possible)?
Not William, but yes, the wines of today are going to be quite different at maturity. They will be silkier, soft, and more elegant while expressing greater purity, purity meaning closer to the true essence of the fruits. Sorry to disappoint a few folks in this thread, but pyrazines and rusticity are a thing of the past.
Also, wines of today are more gentle and pleasurable to taste at all points of their evolution.
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I find “pure” to be an awkward wine descriptor. In any other use, it means free of contaminants, e.g., pure gold or silver, pure water, etc. But wine is a complex mixture, where that complexity is valued.
Seems like Bordeaux is headed toward Napa uniformity, which is a little sad.
That is not how the word purity is used by anyone I know. It is more of how I explained it. Purity is capturing the essence of the fruit off the vine. You might not value that, or want wines that express that. But that is what purity means.
Purity is incredibly difficult to capture. Personally, I find the wines of Bordeaux to be incredibly complex. YMMV.
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Jeff, what’s your take on the transition from the 2000-2015(18) vintage or so, to what WK describes as “contemporary classicism”? If his description is accurate, there is a clear paradigm shift happening in Bordeaux. Using Troplong Mondot as an example - a wine I thought went Frankenstein on us - his description of 2019 appears the polar opposite of what you found profound in the 2010 release. I have not seen your notes on the 2019, just checked your site.
Thanks!
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Why would you compare his notes on 2019 with my notes on 2010? They are completely different wines and vintages. Why not compare my notes on 2019 with his on 2019?
You can find a detailed look at all the changes and tasting notes for Troplong Mondot Learn about Chateau Troplong Mondot St. Emilion, Complete Guide
FWIW, I have a laundry list of modernizations and changes in Bordeaux on my site. They are probably parked in the wrong place, as I tend to keep the site updated, adding to content, or editing as I go along, and not adding as many new pages or links. On my page, history of Bordeaux, I discuss the changes in Bordeaux, in the section “Has Bordeaux become too Modernized?” Honestly, it is not nearly as complete, detailed, or well-written as Willam’s essay. I do tend to use bullet points more often than not.
That being said, one of the points I cover is the continuing changes and modernizations that have taken place since phylloxera. Every generation or two feels like you do, that they are no longer tasting the same wines they are used to.
This has been going on since the late 1800s when Bordeaux moved from ungrafted to grafted rootstock. The cellarmaster of Chateau Margaux wrote, and I paraphrase that the taste of Bordeaux has been lost.
For Bordeaux, all the top estates are continually making changes, modernizations, and improvements. They continue learning, and experimenting as they go. It is not a stagnant region. While some of those changes are to various extents the same for everyone, the degree to which they are taken, and the direction each estate is seeking varies. It is not one-size-fits-all.
It’s funny because when COS built the first modern 100% gravity cellar, I remember folks on the Parker board laughing at it. Today, it is difficult to find a cellar at any of the top estates that do not move everything by gravity. Time seems to be needed for some folks to feel comfortable with change. This remark is not about you, it is simply a general memory of things and views change.
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I could be off, but I think of pure in this context as a synonym for clear, and I really appreciate clear flavors in wine. Clarity of flavor, for me, doesn’t detract from complexity.
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