There is an immense variety of Bordeaux wine, so, to try to find a wine which could be the representation of the intimate DNA of Bordeaux wine could be judged as a risky exercise.
It is just a game, an intellectual game, to name one wine as being representative of what Bordeaux wine is. Some people could say that it is nonsense. But it is just a game.
If I had been asked before last week, I would have named Haut-Bailly. And, to try to find also an optimal maturity, I would have said 1990 Haut-Bailly. There is an elegance in this wine which corresponds to the grace of Véronique Sanders, who makes the wine nowadays, after her father, and even if the wine today does not belong to her family anymore.
But during the two crazy days in Bochum with an overdose of canonic wines, I had drunk two wines which led me to think of what the archetypal Bordeaux could be.
I drank 1955 Vieux Chateau Certan which was of an amazing perfection. This wine was considered by many of my friends as a 100 points wine. But this wine had in hand the flag of Pomerol, more than the flag of Bordeaux.
And I drank a 1955 Pontet-Canet. This wine cannot pretend to be a 100 points wine. This would be inappropriate. But it had a balance, an elegance, a sense for proportions which struck me. I was extremely moved by this wine, I would say abnormally moved, and while I was drinking it, I thought : “this wine is what an archetypal Bordeaux wine should be”.
And I went further : this age for this wine is the optimal form of maturity.
So, after this experience, I thought : “if I had to name what a Bordeaux should be, with an optimal maturity, I would name 1955 Pontet-Canet”.
This does not mean that this wine is the best. No. It means that it represents a sane image of the archetypal Bordeaux. With that, I do not pretend that Pauillac should be the archetypal Bordeaux, as for my taste, the archetypal Bordeaux would be a Pessac-Léognan, if I had to name one sub-region.
But at one moment, I had this encounter, and I thought that a definition of Bordeaux in a dictionary of taste would be 1955 Pontet-Canet.
Have you ever had once, this sensation of finding that a Bordeaux wine was fully corresponding to what a Bordeaux should be ?