While I drink other wines, my first love has always been Bordeaux, and I subscribed to the Advocate purely for William’s coverage. To date this year, it has been kind of sparse. By my count, and I may have missed something, since the beginning of the year, there have been four articles, two of them were general vintage pieces, and two were verticals of Sauternes.
While I understand William’s schedule is hectic, it would be nice to see more coverage. It’s not as though Bordeaux is a minor region, and it is a shame given that it does seem to be such an afterthought.
I did actually call them a couple of months ago, and I was told there were no new articles on the calendar. Given that I was thinking of not subscribing next year, I was hoping for a better answer.
At the risk of being flippant, other than en primeur and vertical or horizontal tastings, what more is there to say that hasn’t already been said? There aren’t exactly exciting new growers hitting the market.
In my opinion Bordeaux would be much more interesting if it wasn’t all large estates mostly doing the same thing year end and year out. I think much of it dates back to before the Revolution, where the church and nobility owned most of the land in Burgundy, while wealthy families owned many Bordeaux châteaus. After the Revolution, the church’s land in Burgundy was confiscated, sold, and divided, while wealthy Bordeaux families incorporated their estates to avoid issues with heirs. This led to Bordeaux vineyards having single owners, while Burgundy vineyards are divided among many owners.
Bordeaux would surely warrant more coverage if 50 different people were trying to make wine from each of the first growth plots. Champagne and Burgundy just have more people making changes all the time. This makes Bordeaux, not less interesting, but more static. How many people in Bordeaux are really doing something that warrants a deep dive of something new and interesting? The only two people that have really done anything interesting in Bordeaux in the last 50 years were Jean-Pierre Boyer and Michel Rolland. I guess there are more minor things like replantings, new cellars/wine making equipment, and slight tweaks of a blend–but there are 100 people like Jeff Leve that do a great job covering that.
I’d much rather they spend their resources outside of Bordeaux.
How many Bordeaux pieces does there need to be per year? Review them before they go on sale en primeur, review them the year they’re released, and do a couple of verticals or something like that.
I’m just one guy, but I do like and cellar Bdx (though it’s not the largest part of my cellar) and I haven’t found the quantity of Bdx coverage in TWA to be lacking. Of course, if they added more (annual 10 and 20 year after the vintage horizontals, for example?), I wouldn’t complain either!
I would like to see more Bordeaux coverage as well. I think the TWA does a fine job and glad I rejoined, but would love a bit more content there as well. Hard to argue that it is not one of the most important wine regions in the world, and it is what put TWA on the map. I will say, William’ notes, comments and context are better than most anything out there right now on Bordeaux.
Because Neal Martin is invited to the Southwold tastings, Vinous has coverage of the three-year and 10-year horizontals. Lisa now covers it for her own publication. William needs to finagle an invitation. Neal also gets invited to large tastings from private collectors and/or chateaux. Once William (or another WA reviewer) gets ensconced as the Bordeaux reviewer, I expect those invitations would come.
FWIW, William’s coverage overall has decreased noticeably since becoming Editor-in-Chief. One Burgundy article and a few scattered champagne reviews. He did have a lot of articles towards the end of 2023.
This is certainly an interesting concept - and one I would assume Bordeaux ‘purists’ may have issues with. To many, it’s not the concept of others working with the fruit - it’s the intricate changes from vintage to vintage based mainly on weather and the environment that the winery, and hopefully the end user, sees.
And yes, I know that this is a ‘romantic’ concept for sure - just thought I’d throw it out there for discussion purposes.
I would say that is one of those minor things that I’d rather not see William Kelley waste time with. Does anyone really have a hard time figuring out good vintatges, bad vintages, and AFWE vintages?
Apparently if I read most of the posts correctly, it seems that people feel that Bordeaux and it’s wines can be condensed into almost nothingness. Little variation, no innovation except for players now on the fringe, who once took center stage. Of course, it is all somewhat reductive; Bordeaux is in a constant state of evolution, and the yearly harvest brings with it tremendous challenges, as does the gradual but very real effects of climate change.
Given the changes in Bordeaux, greater ripeness and more alcohol, not to mention the incredibly high scores in some vintages, it seems odd that there are so few reports on how the modern vintages are aging. The Bordeaux of today are very different to wines made thirty years ago, and obviously much of it is from changes outside the control of the winemaker. And the potential for aging has almost certainly changed, but we can determine this only by tasting.
So for example, I am curious how Right Bank vintages from 2010 with alcohol levels starting at 15% are today nearly fifteen years on. Or how are the 2005s doing, a vintage that Parker initially loved but then worried about the tannins? Personally, I enjoy verticals, as it shows terroir, philosophy, quality, changes etc.
The idea that an en primeur and done approach is enough, doesn’t begin to deal with the questions and the changes within Bordeaux. William did an exceptional job explaining the technical advances in Bordeaux, but that needs to be backed up by tasting notes.
I think that’s a fair summary of many of the posts in this thread, but I don’t think those posts are representative of most of us who include Bdx in our cellars. I would love to see more retrospectives in addition to annual reports on the new EP vintage and the newly released vintage.
I just don’t know how fair it is to say “so little coverage” when Bdx still generally gets more coverage than any other region., or at least I’m not aware of any other region that gets a broad report each Spring of the yet-to-be-bottled prior year’s vintage, plus a broad report annually of the newly released wines, plus occasional retrospectives.
