2012 Bordeaux Vintage – A Pleasant Surprise Rewarding Hard Work, Precision & Adaptation
The Weather
2012 started under precarious conditions. It was cool and damp in the spring leading to outbreaks of mildew, uneven flowering and coulure. Properties scrambled to deal with these issues according to their individual philosophies and financial capacities throughout late April, May and into June. Luckily, in July and through the end of September, the weather improved: it turned hot, sunny and dry. In certain instances it became very hot, with temperatures over 100°F. Towards the end of September, hot days, newly arrived cool nights and some much needed rain nourished the grapes through to excellent maturity levels and left the early-ripening merlot primed for the picking. Depending on where you were located in the region, the 1st and 2nd week of October brought varying temperatures and rains, resulting in damp, less than ideal harvest conditions. Merlot was mostly picked prior to the 5th of October under dry and warm conditions. It was ripe, concentrated and clean if the vineyard manager made the difficult decisions to eliminate the unripe grapes caused by uneven flowering and to pick early enough to retain freshness and balance. Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and other blending varieties had varying levels of maturity, cleanliness and attractiveness depending on their geographic location and the rigidity of the sorting both in the vineyard and at the table(s).
The Narrative
Uneven flowering always stirs the pot and delays the vines’ maturation cycle. Hot and dry summers always push the grapes to the brink of over-ripeness without phenolic ripeness and freshness. Damp harvest conditions have the potential to complicate matters even further. The unpredictable weather in Bordeaux makes it a struggle to grow grapes in most years. The weather in Bordeaux is kind of depressing for a lot of the year. Just ask Anderson and he’ll tell you that it rained every day for 5 straight days during his first visit to the region with me last week. Sure, there are certain vintages (recently ’00, ’05, ’09 and ’10) where it seems like the stars were so aligned that if you didn’t make a good wine, you really shouldn’t be making wine or you should at least be kicking yourself for getting in the way. In most years, though, it requires a skilled, well-financed and creative winemaker or vineyard manager to get the most out of a Bordeaux vintage. The vines are constantly stressed, which is one of the main reasons why I believe these wines to be so profound. The most important questions to me are threefold. 1. Does the vineyard manager or winemaker have the skill and high-quality vineyards to produce excellent fruit no matter how difficult the vintage may be, by working hard in the vines, sorting out the bad and only keeping and concentrating on the good? 2. Is the Chateau able to put only the best fruit into the Grand Vin, or are they obliged (by financial necessity or unabashed greed) to include in the Grand Vin a greater percentage than they should of their total production? 3. Did the winemaker try to push the extraction, introduce too much wood or generally manipulate the process so much so that the resulting wine is out of balance, uncharacteristic of its terroir and generally not pleasurable? These are the questions that you have to ask yourself each year in Bordeaux. Wine by wine. Chateau by Chateau.
I find 2012 to be a very difficult vintage to generalize one way or the other. We tasted at over 40 different Chateaux as well as a large number of wines at the appellation/ regional tastings and at our negociants’ offices. If anything, I’d say it was up and down, and certainly very good to excellent for some properties. Pomerol, St. Emilion, Margaux and individuals in St. Julien were quite successful. There were even a few in Pauillac and St. Estephe that we really liked. Some people have compared it to 2001, but I think the ‘01s were pretty hard in the beginning. They’ve since softened and are drinking very well today, but the best examples of ’12, on the other hand, are pretty delicious even today and seem poised to age and improve in the cellar. You may be tempted to drink them as soon as they land, but would reward yourself by allowing them to reach greater maturity in the cellar.
Appellation Specifics
In Margaux, the Cabernet Sauvignon was pure and fine if sorted properly and well-attended to over the course of the early part of the vine’s maturation during less-than-ideal growing conditions. I think these may be the best examples of d’Issan and Pavillon Rouge du Chateau Margaux I’ve ever tasted. Also, I very much enjoyed Cantenac Brown and Brane Cantenac, although these may need more time to resolve their more gripping tannins. In Pomerol, the Merlot was nearly perfect and, if picked at the right time, it was fresh and flavorful. Vieux Chateau Certan, La Conseillante, Clos l’Eglise, l’Eglise Clinet and, yes, even Le Pin (#shocker) made amazing wines that should not be missed, defined by their delicious pure fruit that in certain instances featured anise or licorice flavors that left you smacking your lips minutes after you tasted them, wishing there were more in the glass. In St. Emilion, I think the properties closer to the medieval town on the Côte, where there is shallow clay over limestone, had more success than those in the lower part (some call it the Graves section of St. Emilion), where there is more clay and gravel than limestone. Chapelle d’Ausone, Ausone, Pavie Macquin, Larcis Ducasse, Barde-Haut, and La Fleur de Board all made excellent, fresh and relatively balanced wines. Some are made for earlier drinking than others, but all are delicious in their own way. There were some disappointments in St. Emilion as well, where it seemed like extraction was pushed over the edge and where there was more new wood in the final wine than the fruit and structure could support. This always seems to be the case in St. Emilion, so it came as no surprise. I believe there are some great properties in this large appellation that should be banished to drinking vodka if they continue to mask their terroirs and apply the new wood make-up they seem so determined to employ.
I found Pessac-Léognan and Graves to be the most difficult. Haut Brion and La Mission (again #shocker) made excellent if atypical wines dominated by the highest percentage of merlot of all time. Further up the Médoc in St. Julien, Pauillac, and St. Estephe, results seemed to be much more varied. We really liked Calon-Ségur and Léoville Las Cases. Pontet Canet made a fascinating wine as well. For the first time here, the Grand Vin was raised in 30% amphorae, and Tesseron continues to push the biodynamic philosophy on the backs of his ever-increasing stable of horses. Lynch Bages, St. Pierre, Gloria, Gruaud Larose, and Pichon Baron were also stand-outs. In these three appellations, however, there were also a number of wines that were green, uninteresting, and marked by a decided hollowness. We joked all week that this was the year of the donut. Sweet fruit up front on the attack, then hollow in the middle, finishing abruptly and sometimes harshly. It seemed that some were not content to just make what nature gave them, either waiting to pick too late or maybe over-extracting and pushing the wines out of balance in the cellar, and in some cases both. Nevertheless, in each appellation, the winemaking and the decisions made along the way were the key to what I believe to be a very interesting and compelling vintage. Many producers, critics and folks in the trade have called this “a pleasant surprise,” but for me, it should come as no surprise at all given these growing conditions. If you did the hard work required over the course of the vintage, then you had the potential to make very good to excellent wines. Mother Nature gave many properties a lot of positive raw material to work with if they were working smartly.