A minor, somewhat pedantic point concerning the subject line of the OP. “Bordeauxs” is an incorrect pluralization. “Bordeaux” is the correct spelling of more than one wine from the region of Bordeaux.
I don’t think snark is objectionable, but the sentiment that one can only appreciate wine with the wisdom of a expensive, 20 year cellar, is nonsense and offensive.
The beauty of your rhetoric that it is unimpeachable - if you don’t own cases of well-aged white bordeaux (bought on purchase, preferably, otherwise you’ll be accused of bad provenance), you can’t judge whether the wines are good because they are only good if expensive and well-aged, and you can only determine when to drink them if you have followed their evolution, and no one would ever spend the $$ to buy and cellar such wines unless they liked them in the first instance or are so fantastically wealthy - at a young age, no less! - that the cost of buying and storing a case of Domaine de Chevalier or one of the Haut Brion family ain’t no thing.
So it either comes down to “only the fantastically wealthy can hold a legitimate view on this” or “only people who agree with me can hold a legitimate view on this”. The operating word being “legitimate”. You’re not saying you disagree with our conclusions (disagreement / debate being an inherently good thing), you’re saying that our conclusions are illegitimate, which is effectively an ad hominem.
Must be a narrow window indeed before the oxidation sets in. I haven’t had many chances to taste older white bordeaux, but the handful (and it is just that) from the mid-late 90’s have been tired to oxidized.
Also, it surprises me that 2009 would be deemed as categorically “too young” for any white wine, even one with high acids. 2009s from Chablis, the Saar, Muscadet are all showing fine. And neither the D de C nor the Fieuzal were shy with the oak, glycerin, and ripe fruit. If anything, our group criticized the D de C for being too showy.
That’s silly. What he’s saying is that, if you know these wines, they need more than five years to really show their stuff.
Remember he was responding to your dismissive statements that “everyone joked that we now understood why we never bought white bordeauxs,” that the wines were “consistently mediocre and poor QPR” and that “this is not a category I will be visiting again.” He can be forgiven for saying, “Whoa! You’re writing off the category based on this one tasting? How well do you know these wines?”
Many Vouvray need 10 or 15 years. Huets don’t show much at all for a long time after the first couple of years. I feel the same way about most sweet Mosel-Saar-Ruwers, though the sugar there makes them more enjoyable in a facile way. I find the same thing with many dry rieslings with high acid, too.
So I don’t find anything surprising about Anthony’s suggestion that these were too young. That was my suspicion on Wednesday and it was reinforced when I realized last night that I preferred the 09 and the 2010s to the 2012 and 2013.
Who said the Dom. de Chevalier was “showy”? You? I didn’t hear that at all. If anything, it was much more reserved than most, I thought.
Come now, John. You’re conflating when a white wine reaches its apex with whether it will be tasty young. I don’t think anyone thinks that Huet peaks upon release, but folks have been slurping up the 2008s happily pretty much non-stop since release. Ditto with recent vintages of Mosel rieslings, or any other number of high acid wines. They’re REALLY good when released, good during a shutdown period (if any), and then they get better yet.
Your proposition is that these wines are inaccessible to the point of mediocrity as a result of high acid, only to magically transform with age. I’ve never heard that theory before, especially for whites (contrasted with reds) that don’t need to age out of their tannin. I’ve seen and heard of whites that needed to age out of reduction, but if anything most of these wines showed slightly oxidative, as is typical with oak-aged semillon.
My notes on the DdC read: Ripe nose, touch of butter/cream, some guava fruit, lots of oaky vanilla, a bit fat and sweet. Round upfront but no follow-through on the midpalate, tart but uninteresting, somewhat disjointed with the oaky sweetness on the attack and the acidity on the back-end, some bitter oak tannin on the finish. I ranked it 7th.
I agree with David on this one. I actually just drank a 2010 Huet Clos de Bourg sec last weekend, and while certainly structured for further aging it wasn’t inaccessible at all. In fact, it was delicious, and for my taste would have easily pancaked every wine in Wednesday’s lineup. It also had far more density of material and structure than any of Wednesday’s wines, and will probably outlast all of them if it doesn’t premox.
Comparing white BDX aging curve to Chablis, Muscadet, the Saar et al doesn’t make any sense.
I buy Carbonnieux Blanc, Olivier Blanc, Latour-Martillac, Malartic-Lagraviere, Plantieres-Haut-Brion Blanc, Haut-Bergey Blanc & Smith Haut-Lafitte Blanc from solid vintages on release: 3-6 bottles each depending on price all within the $35 to $75 range. You don’t have to be “fantastically wealthy” to do this.
Except that for very oaky wines (a category encompassing in my experience the majority of dry white Bordeaux) it takes time for the oak to integrate if it is going to. So a wine that sees less oak might not require the age that an oakier wine does. For example I would never drink a young Roty premier or grand cru but happily enjoy them when old.
Mind you for my palate white Bordeaux doesn’t turn into anything all that interesting with age (though it does improve) but I wouldn’t claim that all wines that show well old will show well young.
I didn’t find them “inaccessible to the point of mediocrity.” That was your take. I thought the top four or five were young and taught, but well balanced and very promising. And I enjoyed them even though they were fairly closed.
With the exception of the DdC – your favorite – the wines were one, two and four years old. Why are you so certain they have no future? You seem very wedded to that conviction.
So you ranked it 7th and David ranked it 1st. Hmmm. Great consensus we have going here.
I didn’t find the wine ripe or sweet and didn’t find vanilla oak. I got fresh sawn wood, both on Wednesday and last night. The oak was there, but I thought it just needed some time to integrate. Different strokes…
I’m put off wines where I feel oak is there to sucker me with vanilla, butter and spice. I didn’t find that oak profile in any of these wines.
As for Huet, I don’t know about more recent vintages, but the wine was known for being rather dumb for an extended period after the first few years. Condrieu is another example of that.
I will let Anthony reply for himself but I did not read his comment as saying that you need the most expensive, trophies wines from the top vintages. I read his post as saying you need to give the wines you bought more time - that they were too young.
FYI, the Clos Floridene and Dom. de Chavelier leftovers were still showing quite nicely last night. Not bad for three days in the fridge. The Olivier and Carbonnieux were getting a bit disjointed.
Are you claiming that Anthony’s response was nothing but a douchey reaction to a sacred cow simply for pointing out that your condemnation of the entirety of White Bordeaux was made on an admittedly unrepresentative sample set?
