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Body and Structure
 It is customary in Bordeaux that for every opinion a grower expresses there is one with diagonally the opposite. Therefore, whatever I say here is bound to be contested by somebody. This year the wines had sound structure. This means that hopefully they will be able to develop well and without deviation.
Tannins were good and mainly ripe; acidities were unusually high. These are the two principal components that give longevity to the wine. Some Châteaux have been talking about a life expectancy of 15 – 20 years, but such prognostications are pretty loose at this stage. Producers have been unusually reticent about comparing it to other vintages and in my opinion this is how it should be. Each vintage is an individual and comparison is unhelpful.
The composition of the wine is balanced and the wines are harmonious if not powerful and concentrated, but a few of them are both of the latter. The days of not ready to drink tannic wines for many years are long gone. There is an admirable lack of over-oaking and the fashion of enjoying oak-juice seems to be well outdated. Maximum fruit and gentle tannins are the order of the day and the vast majority of 2014s fulfil these criteria.
Rot
There was virtually no botrytis or other forms of rot on the red grapes this year. The only serious rot was the late developing noble rot on the sweet wine grapes. No rot is the opposite of 2013 and a joy for producers. There was pressure from mildew and other cryptogrammic disease during the poor July and August but they were all dried out by the hot, dry September. That beastly creature-the Suzuki fruit fly caused havoc and disaster in a few vineyards in the sweet wine areas, but in most vineyards grapes that had been affected with sour rot were eliminated by draconian sorting on the vine prior to harvest. Red wine grapes came in fine and healthy.
Cabernet vs. Merlot –not forgetting Petit Verdot
Once again, 2014 is not a Cabernet or a Merlot year, but a year where all varieties were able to develop full maturity and be picked at the optimum moment thanks to the wonderful, dry October. The earlier grapes, principally Merlot, suffered considerable coulure, which reduced the crop but not the potential quality. Cabernet and later maturing varieties, particularly Petit Verdot, flowered under better, in fact excellent conditions and hardly suffered any coulure at all. Cabernet had more time to enjoy the fine Indian summer and profited greatly from it. Petit Verdot often does not ripen fully in Bordeaux but this year it did and played a serious role in complexing the wines. For all varieties alcoholic strengths this year were moderate, which certainly helped their elegance and finesse. 2014 was an ALL VARIETY wine!
Fruit
Let me give my personal opinion only about the weak spot of 2014 and reflect on why all of them were not superb. You can have beautiful and totally healthy grapes, but sometimes they are less packed with flavour than others. I think that in some wines this was the case this year and was the result of several factors. Firstly the very poor, cool July and August. Then there was the occasional vegetal note that the fine September and October weather had not been totally able to eliminate. Then there is the fact that the vegetative growth continued long after véraison (see Denis Dubourdieu criteria in the previous article in delWine). This meant that the root was pumping its goodness into the leaves and canopy rather than the grapes. Also colour change was very slow.
Finally night temperatures remained warm, which meant that there was no great difference between daytime and night-time temperatures and this difference is important for the development of bouquet and flavour compounds. These various factors contributed to grapes that were ripe both with regard to acidity and alcohol levels as well as phenolically, but in some cases lacked concentration and intensity of flavour in the juice. Terroir played a vital role in this and I refer readers back to the comment by Paul Pontallier about terroir and catching up for time lost at the beginning of the article in Part 1. Overall, where these problems existed, the wine was finer on the nose than on the palate. In the interest of pure fruit Château Palmer used NO sulphur this year.
Ripeness
This year was a joy in this respect. One grows tired of repeating the same thing over and over again, but it cannot be overstated that September and October were outstanding. All varieties of grapes were able to ripen fully and what’s more picked, parcel by parcel, and often with inter-parcellar selection, at the optimum moment.
We had what the Californians call “hang time”, which is rare in Bordeaux – the ability to leave grapes hanging on the vines, without the risk of rot, until both they and the growers were ready. It was a “serene” vintage, which again is rare in our humid climate where the picking “window” is often very narrow. For once the Cabernet Sauvignon was sometimes richer and more alcoholic than the Merlot as they had more time to profit from this perfect weather and at Château Cheval Blanc picking of the Merlot only finished 8 days after they started on the Cabernet. Gravel gave the finest results. Bruno Borie (who manages the Second growth family estate of Château Ducru-Beaucaillou in Saint Julien-editor) says that it was 120 days between flowerings and picking, which is the longest he has ever known.
Yield
This is perhaps the least happy matter. Yields were low. Merlot suffered a lot of coulure. There was millerandage and green pruning had to be draconian to remove grapes affected by the latter. Grapes that were large in size shrank with concentration during the fine, hot ripening period, aided by drying winds. In the sweet wine area they were extremely low. Climens declared just 8 hl/hA; Suduiraut 7 hl/hA. The First Growths only put about a third of the yield into their First Wines. Thankfully I am not concerned here with marketing, but pricing the wines this year is a major conundrum balancing yield and quality! Amusingly, but not for them, an invasion of snails ate some of the Château Duhart Milon grapes and reduced their crop!
Colour
Colour change in many vineyards took place in two stages and was slow and protracted. Because of the hot weather during the vintage fermentation in most cases started rapidly if not immediately and colour came out quickly. Colours this year are deep and intense in only a minority of wines as the very slow colour change did not always result in maximum pigmentation. It was important to extract the whole of available colour. I understand now what originally surprised me greatly – the fact that a number of properties did pre-fermentation maceration (cold soaking). Indeed Château Lascombes cold-soaked for 10 days at 8°C before allowing the fermentation to start, presumably in order to extract the colour. Colour is indeed important, particularly visually, but wines can be full-bodied and finely structured without having extremely deep and intense colour and this is the case for many wines this year.
PRESS WINE
This was used less than in 2013. Since the yields were low, where the Press wine was found to be of suitable quality it was used, but the finest wines were very sparing in their use this year.
Acidities
Acidities this year were remarkably high and everybody was very happy about this. One of the problems here in Bordeaux is that if we wait for phenolic ripeness, the acidity in the wine has often become lower than is ideal for perfect balance. This year, because of the poor and cool July and August the acidity in the grapes remained higher than usual and was therefore still perfect when the grapes were picked. A significant factor was the malic acid content, which made up a high percentage of the 2014 total acidity. Malo-lactic fermentation was therefore very important, but took place immediately after the alcoholic fermentation without any trouble.
In some white wines the malic acid content persuaded growers to do a partial malo-lactic fermentation, but for the most part growers were happy to leave the acidities as they were. Acidity is one of the factors that give red wine longevity. This year they gave wonderful freshness to the dry white wines, but they also conferred freshness and energy to the red wines, giving the best of them an extra touch of elegance.
Tannins
Tannins are one of the most important factors in any red wine. Last year they were a major problem. This year they were, in the vast majority of wines, excellent. It was vitally important to extract them slowly and gently and not to over-extraction order to obtain tannins with finesse and subtlety. Extraction had to be monitored daily. Fermentation temperatures should not have been too high- 28°C was enough. Pumping-over had to be carefully controlled and length of skin contact carefully judged. Not too much of either.
The wines were delicate rather than robust and the purity of the fruit had to be carefully preserved. Le Pin is proud of their “pure and silky tannins, the rich colour, the aromatic balance and the precision of the wine”. The IPTs were mainly in the 70s (IPT-Indices des Polyphenols Totals is the latest buzz word in Bordeaux and is measure of Polyphenols which are the building blocks of wine, including tannins and flavonoids. They are responsible for colour, taste, and mouth-feel and are thus quite important- editor) and in early tastings the tannins are already well integrated and in the best wines they are smooth and silky.
At the En Primeur tastings after a tasting session one is sometimes left with a mouth coated in tannin. This was not the case this year. They will be sufficient to give the wine a medium length life, and perhaps in a few cases a relatively long one, and are in balance and harmony with the acidities and the alcohol level. Château Cos d’Estournel, always highly individualistic, had IPTs of 87 and an alcoholic strength of 14.2° with a Total Acidity of 3.5 gms/Li and a pH of 3.7. Rather amazingly the IPT of the Petit Verdot at Château Lascombes was a huge119. This is the highest figure that I have found.
Conclusion
This has been a long and detailed report-spread in 2 Parts (Click HERE for Part 1). But in the final analysis 3.5 out of Denis Dubourdieu’s 5 criteria were fulfilled for Red Wine. This means very good wines and overall I feel this is correct. Of course, as always, there are some magnificent exceptions which will be the pride and joy of the 2014 vintage. Straightforward not austere, smooth not heavy, taut not green! A number of growers mention tension, which is a compliment and not an insult! Great dry white Bordeaux and very small quantities of exceptional botrytised Sweet White Wines. Growers are happy and the frost danger for 2015 is over!
For Part I of the 2-Part series, please visit: Wine Feature: Bordeaux 2014 a Vinegrower's Vintage- Part I
John Salvi Master of Wine
John Salvi is one of the most senior Masters of Wine who are very active-in fact, he has been currently consulting with a winery in China among other assignments. He is a fellow judge with me in a few competitions and a regular expert guest writer for delWine. Though an overall wine expert, he is an authority on wines from Bordeaux where he has lived for decades and is a specialist in weather-editor |