Bordeaux - it's big, but is it clever?

Bordeaux must be the world’s most high profile wine region.  Even someone with only the most sketchy wine knowledge would surely be able to name Bordeaux as somewhere that makes wine.

It’s certainly big, turning out a greater volume of wine than almost any region of France, except the vast swathe of vineyard in Languedoc-Roussillon to the south.  In terms of quality, it is both big and beautiful, as the largest fine wine region in the world.

The region is so big, in fact, that there is not a single classification that covers all of its vineyards.  Additionally, the various classifications that exist – and there are five – relate to only around 5% of the total volume of wine produced in Bordeaux.  The best known classification is that dating from 1855, when 4 Châteaux were designated as Premier Cru (or First Growth), and so on down to Fifth Growth.  The original First Growths were Châteaux Latour, Lafite-Rothschild, Margaux and Haut-Brion.  This classification has remained unchanged, save for the elevation of Mouton-Rothschild from Second to First Growth in 1973.

Poster at Château Haut-Bailly, depicting itself alongside Bordeaux's "grands vins"

The original list of growths was governed by the price commanded by the various Châteaux, rather than an attempt to assess their relative quality.  As far as the First Growths go, their ability to command the highest prices still holds true today.  However, further down the ranking, things become more complex:  there is a semi-official category of “Super Second” Growths, who have the ambition – and, they argue – the quality to put themselves on a par with the First Growths.  Cos d’Estournel is the most famous (or possibly infamous) example.

At the other end of the scale are Châteaux who cling to their ranking in the 1855 classification, yet the quality of whose wines now clearly does not live up to their historic billing.  It would be ungenerous of me to give any examples but, as ever in Bordeaux, price is the best indicator of perceived quality.

If you are wondering what the other four classifications of Bordeaux are, they are: Cru Classé de Graves, Grand Cru Classé de St Emilion, and Crus Bourgeois and Crus Artisans in the Médoc.  Unlike the 1855 classification, most of the others have attempted, some with more success than others, to update their rankings.  St Emilion has been mired in an attempt to re-organize its classification since it published a revision in 2009.  Legal challenges meant that this 2009 version was never fully implemented and a further revision, published in 2012 has, quelle surprise, itself in turn been challenged in the courts by properties facing demotion.  The removal of a “Premier” from a “Grand Cru Classé” may seem a minor change, but it could have dire consequences on the price the wine can fetch, not to mention the career prospects of the winemaker involved.

Château Cheval Blanc - St Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classé "A" (awaiting an A* perhaps)

I had often wondered why the Bordelais hadn’t instigated a single classification for the whole region, but I think this legal tussle in St Emilion has provided the answer:  there is no way that it could be successfully done in a way that wouldn’t provoke mass law suits and boycotts.  The famously never-classified vineyards of Pomerol, including “First Growth in all but name” Petrus, would surely resist any attempt to include them, as they have done very nicely, thank you, without any classification.  Lawyers in the region might be the only people to relish the prospect.

Concrete vats at Cheval Blanc's new winery - they aren't curvy on the inside

But, leaving aside all this high falutin’ wine that most of us will drink rarely, if at all; the kind of Bordeaux that we see most often has no more grand classification than the standard Bordeaux AC, or Bordeaux Supérieur AC.  The Supérieur version, incidentally, is merely higher in alcohol than its generic Bordeaux sibling.  Together they account for around half of all Bordeaux produced.  If you take a look at any bottle of claret on a wine merchant’s or supermarket’s shelves at under £10, this is what you are likely to find.

Château de Sours - ambitious winemaking in the low profile Entre-Deux-Mers area

The frustration (but also the joy, for those in the know) is that this huge category covers a vast range of wine quality.  While judging a good number of generic red Bordeaux at one of the major wine competitions this year, I was struck that many of the wines, probably at the lower end of the price range, felt like exercises in problem solving, with under-ripeness and cheap oak featuring too often.

The bad news is that Bordeaux is too big and still produces too much wine that fails to please, or even to find a market in the first place.  Especially in patchy vintages like 2012, many lower-priced Bordeaux won’t be much fun to drink.

 

Haut-Bailly - a Grand Cru Classé de Graves

Is there good news?  In a word, yes.  Overall, quality has never been higher as those winemakers who manage to flourish are forced to up their game in the face of falling domestic wine consumption and competition from the New World in export markets.  Bordeaux, above rock-bottom prices, can be a source of good quality wines for everyday, not just collectors’ items and investment vehicles.

A useful resource to help you separate the wheat from the chaff is an annual selection based on blind tasting to choose the best Bordeaux wines that offer great value between £6 and £20 a bottle, selected by a panel of experienced tasters and educators.  You can browse the selection here:  http://www.bordeaux.com/uk/wines/selection.  Happy hunting.

Cheval Blanc: the making of a thoroughbred

Warning:  arcane French wine labelling discussion alert.

In the rather stolid rubric of the St Emilion wine classification system, Château Cheval Blanc is a Premier Grand Cru Classé A.  Some French regions have Grand Cru as the very top of the quality tree; over in the Médoc in Bordeaux’s left bank, it is the five Premiers Crus who reign supreme.  In St Emilion, however, it looks as though a committee of strong-minded people couldn’t agree which way to jump and so went for both.  Then, because so many producers ended up being given the highest accolade of Premier Grand Cru Classé, they had to divide this top tier into the very top producers, of which Cheval Blanc is one of four, who are awarded an A rather than an ignominious B, to round off their official nomenclature. 

There are 14 Châteaux on the Premier Grand Cru Classé rung of the quality ladder, with another 64 properties at the next level down, Grand Cru Classé.  If you are sipping a bottle of red Burgundy labelled Grand Cru Classé, your nose (if not your wallet) should tell you that you are at the top of the tree, quality-wise.  But if you find the same thing on the label of your St Emilion, then  you are not supping such rarified nectar (and have not happened on the bargain of the century either).

If you, probably very wisely, skipped over those first couple of paragraphs, here’s a quick summary:  Château Cheval Blanc is a bit special.

Like most St Emilion producers, their wines are made from a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc – but unlike most of their neighbours, they have no limestone in their soils.  Instead they have plots with a mosaic of soils based on sand, gravel and clay – in this they have more in common with their near neighbours in Pomerol.

Cheval Blanc’s vineyards are made up of slightly more Cabernet Franc (58%) than Merlot, which accounts for the remainder.   This high proportion of Cabernet Franc also sets them apart from most of their St Emilion cohort, where Merlot tends to take the lead role.

Now, you might think that it was a pretty straightforward task to blend just two varieties to make a wine, but of course it rarely is.  

At Cheval Blanc grapes can end up in one of four destinations – as part of the “grand vin” Cheval Blanc; second wine, Le Petit Cheval; their 3^rd wine or, finally, sold off in bulk to be subsumed into generic St Emilion wines.

Château Cheval Blanc covers 39 hectares (that’s around 100 acres) and is made up of 44 different plots, each of which represents one of the two grape varieties, growing on one of three soil types:  sand, gravel or clay.  At a recent tasting in London, guided by Pierre-Olivier Clouet, the impossibly youthful-looking Technical Manager at the Château, I was able to taste samples from the different parcels from the 2012 vintage:  Merlot and Cabernet Franc from each of three soil types.  Now these wines are a long way from being finished and still have another year or so to age in barrel before their final fate is decided, from grand vin to bulk sell-off, so we were not really getting a sneaky peek at Cheval Blanc 2012 – but it did sort of feel that way.

It was instructive to taste how the same grape variety can perform so differently on the different soils.  Merlot grown on sand is earthy and metallic with a touch of green stalkiness.  Yet on clay and gravel soils that unripe, green note disappears and there is a rush of ripe berry fruits instead.  Cabernet Franc followed the same pattern, with the sandy soils producing the poorest wine, and clay proving to be the perfect growing medium.

Before we moved on, I couldn’t resist having a go at blending my own Cheval Blanc 2012 – the core being Cabernet Franc grown on clay, plus a proportion on gravel, with Merlot from clay soil completing the picture.  Pretty delicious I thought – I wonder if I’ll get the chance to compare it with the real thing?  Of course my slapdash sloshing of wines from one glass to another is a world away from the minute deliberations that actually determine the final make-up of the wines.  Pierre-Oliver told us that they have never made a perfect blend of Cheval Blanc, showing what a complex mixture of art and science go into the blending process.

Having looked at the bones of an as-yet-to-be-born wine, we then went on to taste the final result from previous vintages of Cheval Blanc and second wine Le Petit Cheval.  We were comparing wines from 2004 (a cool and wet vintage) with 2010 (a cool and dry one).  Incidentally it’s good to know that it isn’t just the UK that has had so much lacklustre weather in recent years.  I digress.

Le Petit Cheval 2004 was a beguiling wine, its tannins beginning to soften at nine years old.  Cheval Blanc from the same year was more imposing, with a solidly built structure underpinning the fruit, obviously a wine with a long future ahead of it.

The 2010 wines are clearly close to Pierre-Olivier’s heart and show great freshness and elegance, but it would be a crime to drink them any time soon.

And if you would like to squirrel a few bottles away for some special occasion in the future, what will they set you back?  It is both a blessing and a curse of those in the wine trade that we are often treated to tastings of wines which we could never afford to drink (or at least I couldn’t).  Deep pockets are required in this game:  Cheval Blanc 2010 is available for upwards of £750 a bottle.  My favourite wine from the tasting for current drinking, Le Petit Cheval 2004 is a snip at around £120.

I returned home and came down to earth with a bump and a glass of a 10 quid Argentinian red – very delicious it was too.