Paul Pontallier at no less an address than Château Margaux, where he is always understandably proud of their venerable Cabernet vines, admitted that in 2012 they had to reintroduce chaptalisation, adding a little sugar to the fermentation vat to supplement what nature had provided. To learn about our Fruit from gravel and clay terroir that had enough water to feed the vines produced the best wine. 2011 est un millésime difficile sur Bordeaux, une météo capricieuse en est la cause. So how does the British wine trade really feel about bordeaux?

If the region does not receive adequate rain to help feed the vines, the vines will be stressed and might not gain phenolic ripeness. 2012 Bordeaux wine has the potential to be classic in style, which should please thirsty fans of traditional Bordeaux wine.

That was borne out by this tasting in bottle, for while there are excellent sweet wines from the likes of Climens, La Tour Blanche, de Fargues and Doisy-Daëne, others were decent enough but not thrilling. Here is where blind tasting is so useful: vindicating an observation that was noted in sighted bottles.

The watchword is “infusion,” to the point where I sometimes wonder whether I am reviewing wine or artisan tea.However, you cannot change the DNA of Bordeaux wines. There is not a great deal of anything in the 2012s.

All material on this web site, including but not limited to written articles, tasting notes and photographs are the exclusive property of Jeff Leve and may not be copied, used, or reprinted without written notice and must be properly accredited with links to the appropriate page where the material was first published in The Wine Cellar Insider without exception to Jeff Leve/The Wine Cellar Insider. One style of wine had a clear success in 2011 Bordeaux – namely dry whites. It is our opinion that in time, due to the unique, opulent style of the wines, coupled with the extraordinary number of 100 Pt wines, according to Robert Parker, 2009 Bordeaux will become the most collectible vintage in history. The vintage was saved If you don’t accept the use of cookies, please change your browser settings so cookies from this website cannot be placed on your device.

Copyright © 2020 Jancis Robinson Either descriptor works perfectly. Wines take time to come around. In July, the warm, dry summer conditions that had been taking place since February reversed direction. For the red wines, some were quoted as saying the pulp is ripe, the seeds varied in ripeness, but the skins did not ripen.

For those who would like their memories refreshed, click Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. But when low yields are coupled with grapes that did not achieve full, phenolic ripeness, at the end of the day, the only thing vintners are primarily left with is less wine. Following the April rains, there were outbreaks of mildew, which required spraying. Interestingly, a greater percentage of the harvest was relegated to the Grand Vin in 2011, than in 2010 or 2009. Various techniques enable a winemaker to render a newborn wine more approachable than in the past, accentuating the aromatics and softening tannins via gentler and/or shorter extractions.

Producers who had enjoyed back-to-back stunning vintages with 2009 and 2010 were faced with a myriad of choices, all of which requiring extensive work and selection in the vineyards. But that’s a fun conversation best suited for another day.If you like a page in The Wine Cellar Insider, please link to it! Not really. Strict fruit selection of the cabernets. Most producers were done harvesting the white wine grapes by September 25.

I’d like to see reductions from 2010 drop by 40% to 50% for many properties. 2011 Red Bordeaux.

The winter was one of the driest on record.

But as taster of the rest of the appellations, my top tip for value in 2012 is Pessac-Léognan.

You often hear the question, “But is it as good as the 2016?” whenever the new crop of Bordeaux wines are assessed. Has it lost its luster?

Generally speaking, late harvests are not usually harbingers of good things to come.If everything that took place until the end of June didn’t offer what happened next offered additional challenges with 2012 Bordeaux vintage.

Prices for 2012 Bordeaux wine need to be lower in price than the previous year.

See more of Erasmus Bordeaux 2011/2012 on Facebook. But there was enough quality here in both reds and whites to pique my interest in the appellation, so I followed this with a major tasting of less famous names via the Syndicat de Pessac-Léognan and found some really excellent wines selling for as little as 11 euros a bottle ex cellar (though these wines are not really the stuff of an en primeur campaign). It’s interesting to remember previous years like 1991, a vintage that forced some properties to declassify their entire harvest.

Ample stocks of good wines from top years are still available for sale. This is healthy for the marketplace in the long run. Optical sorting was more widely used than ever with the 2012 Bordeaux harvest. Site design by Chris Schendel.This site uses cookies to give you the best user experience. Newly installed estate director Aymeric de Gironde and new consultant Thomas Duclos are molding Troplong-Mondot in a more But it does beg the question: What are the 2016s’ shelf lives?