Attended the UGC 2007 Bordeaux tasting yesterday, and here are some highlights below. A fuller report can be found at my blog site, and I’m slowly getting my TNs up on CT and will eventually gather them under one report there for those who really want the gritty details. Overall, I think the tough conditions of the vintage showed in the wines.
Graves white wines - some good wines here, showing racy acidity from the cool vintage, though perhaps not as good as I’d been hearing. My top wine is easily the light-styled but wonderfully complex and harmonious Pape Clement, a truly great wine; more affordable choices that did well include Ch. Smith Haut-Lafitte and Ch. Malartic-Lagraviere. Dom de Chevalier was a bit disjointed now but may come together in time. A lot of the wines show a greenish edge that I’m not crazy about.
St. Emilion - the wines have very pretty noses, almost across the board, but in some cases the palate disappoints. My top wine in the appellation among those present goes to Ch. Angelus, which was refined and luscious, without being powerful. My value pick goes to Ch. Franc-Mayne, which showed good round fruit as well as slate on the nose.
Pomerol - I only had time to taste two Pomerols, Ch. La Conseillante and Ch. Gazin, which both showed well from opposite ends of the traditional to modern spectrum.
St. Julien - Gruaud Larose stood out to me as a refined, tightly structured wine that will age well.
Moulis - Chasse-Spleen is my QPR pick of the tasting - showed good fruit and nice classic Left-Bank graphite. At $25ish, this blew away a lot of the classed-growth competition.
Margaux - I was not impressed with the classed-growth Margaux I tasted, a lot of thinness and tartness here, but top wines like Ch. Margaux and Ch. Palmer were not present. Ch. D’Angludet is my sleeper pick from here.
Pauillac - my top wines of those present were Ch. Pontet-Canet, Ch. Pichon Lalande and Ch. Lynch-Bages. I prefer Ch. Clerc-Milon to its stablemate Ch. D’Armailhac at lower price levels.
St. Estephe - I ran out of time before I could taste these, unfortunately. I also missed most of the Pessac reds, and Haut Medoc, etc.
Sauternes and Barsac: Climens is opulent and unctuous but a bit too over-the-top for me. I liked Ch. de Fargues, Ch. Guiraud, Ch. Coutet, Ch. Bastor Lamontagne, and Ch. Sigalas-Rabaud.
I was fortunate enough to get video interviews with people from some of the Chateau whose wines impressed me: Mr. Gabriel Vialard, affable and talented winemaker at Ch. Haut-Bailly, the gracious Mme. Celine Villars-Foubet of Chasse Spleen, and Mr. Alfred Tesseron of Ch. Pontet Canet, who was very much the esteemed elder statesman of Bordeaux that I always imagined him to be. I’ll be getting those videos up to my site hopefully in the coming weeks.