Helped out at a 2009 Clarets tasting for a small group of customers at our Vinopolis Arch last week. It was Clare Tooley our Bordeaux resident expert who organised and gave the tasting.
I had sent around this note a couple of months ago...
"I'd like to talk about claret guilt. Claret - Bordeaux Red Wine - is not what it was. Some here still make their wine like their fathers did. Most do not.
Made the old way, claret had a lot of hard tannins which - for as long as they lasted - preserved the wine and allowed it to grow to a beautiful old age. However these tannins gave the young wine a 'sandpaper' texture which made it physically painful to drink.
Made the new way - with riper grapes (partly due to warmer summers, partly due to better viticulture), with gentler extraction of colour, tannins from the skins, the young wine can be soft and delicious.
Some people have got used to drinking claret 'petits millesimes' - light vintages - quite young. But what I want to do is enjoy certain Grands Millesimes' - great vintages, young... very young.
Like the 2009's from around here. I want to drink 2009 NOW! This instant!
So...I am a GUILTY man. This is HERESY. And it will blacken my teeth.
So...?
I am prepared to suffer... if I can have more glasses of that gorgeous, thick, dense, black, fruit and flower scented essence.
And I can. Because I am a wine merchant. But my customers cannot. This wine won't be bottled for months yet. And when it finally arrives everyone will be told - with a lot of finger-wagging that they are not to touch a bottle for at least a decade. Is there any way we can change that?
Yesterday evening Barbara and I took a walk across our valley, past Faugeres over the border into the Saint-Emilion sector. May 1st. But everywhere was not shut; Carl Todeschini, his brother, his dad and grandad were doing a 'Portes Ouvertes' at Château Mangot. Plenty cars outside.
We paused, peered, got waved in, shown the new fermenting barrels (the latest thing; normal new barriques but with a steel 'porthole' at one end. In through this go part-crushed grapes and juice, then weeks later - after spinning the barrel daily - out comes an extraordinarily rich, chunky, muscular wine... and all its lees).
Then we joined the queue and got to taste a sip their various 2005's, and 2006's, all good; they are very skilled winemakers, this family. But then Carl poured the 2009 and honestly it almost knocked you over with its aromas. And it wasn't hard at all to drink. Creamy, really.
Strong, yes. Far too strong for the Puritans. Wickedly strong. But what an experience. Unforgettable. Its not a "this wine would accompany a nice lamb chop". It won't 'accompany' anything. Right now, it will flatten anything that comes near it.
This is not wine as we know it, Jim, this is a primitive, primordial, tectonic experience.
I wish all the customers could go out for a walk of an evening and have such an experience. I'd really like that.
Maybe they could. Would it not be possible to fetch over a few 2009's like this NOW? Pour them in our shops and at our tastings. No-one should be denied this.
I hope this 2009 is another 1990 like some made it here. That was a super voluptuous vintage in and around Saint Emilion from those who - like at Château L'Angelus - made wine the new way. I bought a case of Angelus '90, drank it all within a year and felt very guilty.
But...maybe I needn't have?"
Visit laithwaites.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment