Traditional vs. Modern Bordeaux?

WINE TALK
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[rofl.gif]

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But his point wasn’t really about quality per se (though that was a funny example) it was about terroir. I think we can all agree that the definition of “best possible wine” for many of these Chateaux has, shall we say, evolved since 1855 (or since 1973 for that matter). Given that, isn’t it reasonable to suppose that the selection of which parcels go into a vintage will change over time based on evolving philosophies? That would tend to obscure, if not obliterate, any static sense of terroir - especially as compared to how the term is understood in other regions such as Burgundy.

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Are you a believer, Jeff, or have you personally checked the entire vinification process - from the harvest to the bottling? [basic-smile.gif]

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It depends on which estates you are referring to. For many chateaux, for their Grand Vin, the parcels have remained the same, or at least quite similar for ages. For example, Latour relies on a static 47 hectare parcel known as “l’Enclos.” It’s important to recognize that the top estates are making much less wine today than at anytime in history. So they are not expanding their production of the top wine. Much of their new purchases ends up being used in their second wine. Of course there are estates that increase their vineyards. But the trend today is not to make the most wine possible from the widest array of terroirs, it is to make the best wine possible.

In many ways, the traditional vs modern argument has taken place for more than 100 years. Following the Phylloxera epidemic, the vines, varieties and wines did not resemble those from 1855. After the frost of 1956 when vineyards were replanted, things changed again. In the mid 80’s when estates began using 100% new oak and green harvesting, everything once again was different to the previous generation. My guess is, in 20/30/40 years, the wines of today will be seen as traditional and that generation of drinkers will have the same discussions on traditional vs modern.

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[/quote] My guess is, in 20/30/40 years, the wines of today will be seen as traditional and that generation of drinkers will have the same discussions on traditional vs modern. [/quote]

In twenty years, the experiments in St. Emilion will have been discredited, as the wines with a few notable exceptions, will have aged so poorly that it will be hard to give them away.

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+1 [cheers.gif]

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Nonsense! I completey disagree. I am aware you do not enjoy them now, as you do not like wines made from ripe fruit. So you are not going to like them later. That is fine. That is your taste and palate. Nothing wrong with that. IMO, the wines of St. Emilion have never been better across the board. More producers are making better, more interesting wine than at any time in their history. I buy them, drink them and enjoy them on a regular basis. Your mileage may vary


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Our mileage varies. I get exactly the same mileage as Mark and Rudi. You get the same mileage as Bob Parker. Do you also drive a Tesla S?

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To Dale’s list and mentioning Gilman, John wrote me las year and prided this list of traditionalists.

Beychevelle – Saint Julien (4th)
Calon-Segur - Saint-EstĂšphe (3rd)
Canon - Saint-Émilion (Premier Grand Cru B)
Cantemerle – Haut-Medoc (Cinquiùmes Crus)
Chasse-Spleen - Moulis-en-MĂ©doc
Figeac - Saint-Émilion (Premier Grand Cru B)
Haut-Bailly – Pessac-Leognan (Premiers Crus)
La Tour de By- Medoc
Lagrange – Saint Julien (3rd)
Laujac - Medoc
Magdelaine - Saint-Émilion (Premier Grand Cru B)
Montrose - Saint-EstĂšphe (2nd)
Pontet-Canet – Pauillac ( 5th)
Potensac – Medoc
Rauzan-Gassies – Margaux (2nd)


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I’m confused as to why this thread diverted into a discussion questioning Bordeaux’s right to claim terroir. Bordeaux has always been based on very large vineyards encompassing diverse micro-climates and blends of various varieties.

So, if Bordeaux has no right to claim terroir now based on these practices, it never had a right to claim terroir. So, how does that factor into a discussion of traditional versus modern?

Next, it has been suggested that warm vintages obliterate terroir unless a winemaker picks early.

But, wouldn’t picking “early” dull the effect of the vintage, which is also part of terroir?

Hasn’t Bordeaux experienced warm vintages prior to Parker’s influence?

Another issue: Parker tends to credit himself with the “improvement” in winemaking in Bordeaux.

The proof is that Parker’s scores have gone up in that region and so has his praise.

It seems to me that there is a certain kind of selective amnesia at work in the wine world.

If I didn’t know any better, I would think that Bordeaux winemakers were incapable of making great wine before the late eighties/early nineties when Parker’s power reached critical mass.

However, the wine world seems to acknowledge exceptional vintages like 1945, 1961, and 1982. Parker had no influence over those vintages.

Parker claims that, when tested, the alcohol levels in some of the heralded wines from those vintages prove close to what we’re seeing recently. He claims the low alcohol levels posted on a lot of older Bordeaux are fictions.

I think it’s going to be very difficult to tease out which changes are due to climate change and vintage variation and which are due to changes in canopy management, etc.

Could it be that 2009 shares similarities to, say, 1945? That perhaps more wineries are prepared to make better wine when the vintage conditions tee them up? That the same people who are complaining about the modernity of certain Chateaux would have been complaining similarly about wines made in 1945?

One last point: if Brett is the signature of traditional Bordeaux, how can one ask for Brett-free traditional styled Bordeaux?

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rumor has it that’s what C. Confuron did to get their Musigny, though I heard it was a parking lot.

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It’s hard to think that anyone could disagree with anything that Mark says. No matter what he posts I hear it in that Bartlett voice and it just make so much sense. So Presidential.

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It seems the very ripe, Merlot based Bordeaux always came in first in their tastings. Basically, they are tasting them too young (just like Asimov’s sommeliers in New York)


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Jeff I like ripe fruit; I don’t like overripe fruit. Nor do I like the consultant crafted, manipulated wines coming out of so many St. Emilion cellars. I will miss the Figeacs and the Magdelaines, and hope to God that St. Emilion will come to its senses. I taste in Pomerol and the wines have an integrity missing in all but a handful of properties in St. Emilion. We tasted the 1998 Magdelaine and the 1999 Pavie together, and I found it hard to see how you could not get the Magdelaine.

Of course this is all subjective etc, but I still stand by the fact that most wines such as Pavie 2010 or Cos 2009 (which I retasted recently) they will not get any more interesting over the next couple of decades. Soften maybe, but they’ve lost all the terroir.

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Well, that is a Burg lover speaking–we can discount that opinion safely.

There have been plenty of good Bordeaux vintages since that do not suffer from either over-ripeness or significant spoofing. But there is no doubt that there is some kind of trend towards super-ripe and alcoholic wine (as is the case around the world, witness the 2007 P. Usseglio CdP, which garnered Parker’s highest rating, even if it came in at 15.8% alcohol [and was undrinkable to boot]). So the international trend is there, but I don’t find it that hard to avoid these Merlot-based, super-ripe wines. Cantemerle in my opinion does not cut it (traditional or not)–best to stick with Pichon Lalande and Pichon Baron


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Interesting, I might take the '96 Ducru over the 1982. I certainly found it ripe, but then also a classically structured Bordeaux (to the point where my sister-in-law did not appreciate it).

Will check up on the 2000 Ducru and Cos soon (when are you in town)??

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Where would d’Issan fall on the Traditional <-> Modern spectrum?

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And there you have it. I found Magdelaine one of the most boring St. Emilion wines available. While there is no substitute for personal taste, the marketplace at large did not think much of the wine either. That was a large part of what factored into the decision to stop making the wine and include its vines into Belair Monage.

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That’s a shame, Mark, and I wish to add that the enormous progress in vinification technology is boon and bane at the same time.

On the one hand the new manipulation technologies are quite useful to make better wines today, no question. If you are willing to spend more than 15- 20 Euros, you can get an excellent or even outstanding Bordeaux with around 80-90 percent probability. Great connoisseurship is no longer required. Three decades ago, it was the other way round.

On the other hand the brave new world of innovation technologies has led to more and more uniform wines all over the world. Pandora’s Box has been opened and more and more winemakers and their consultants seem to be obsessed with all the new, terrific stuff. Their behaviour reminds me a little bit of Goethe’s ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’. They ignore the local winemaking history and tradition, and create pompous, alcoholic monster wines, often enough only grotesque caricatures of what they used to be in the past, to please a fancy, ignorant international audience.

The critics are another sad chapter. They seem to suffer increasingly from professional deformation. They actually believe that they are able to rate a wine on the basis of one or two sips despite the fact that a fine Bordeaux reveals all its secrets only reluctantly. Moreover, instead of admitting that their guild is widely superfluous today, many critics try to persuade their audience of an assumed hierarchy of Top Bordeaux, a hierarchy which is just as ridiculous and outdated as the whole holy Bordeaux classification system.

I will not deny that many of the modern Bordeaux wines are very impressive at the first sip, or even at the second. But after that each additional sip became a torture for me. I look away in disgust, and wish myself back to the magic of a bottle of 1975 Les Forts de Latour, 1978 Grand-Puy-Lacoste, 1983 de Pez, 1985 Brand-Cantenac, 1987 LĂ©oville-Barton, or 1991 Pichon Comtesse. I’m certainly no Don Quixote, and I know that it is impossible to stop the march of time, but I’m very sorry that today’s young generation of Bordeaux lovers will only very rarely have the chance to get an idea of what red Bordeaux once was, at the time when elegance and delicacy were the magical words, not the power.

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Boring, no way. I will give you whatever interpretation you want after the basic descriptors come in, but you have got to get the basics right. And you missed a whole host of complexity in the Magdelaine, which was the very thing that delighted me. The one note Pavie (maybe two, I will give you the oak) was boring.

As for the market place, all those lemmings falling off the Parker cliff notes can’t be wrong, can they?

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