Which of you is interested in buying Bordeaux 2019s, I wonder?
Which of you is interested in our impressions of the 2019 en primeur samples to be shown im Bordeaux at the end of March and early April?
Guidance, please, as the invitations to taste flood in from Bordeaux.
I may be old fashioned but I am always interested in the latest Bordeaux vintage. I donât anticipate buying more than two half cases from the lower branches of the great family tree but i will still be interested in hearing your/ Juliaâs impressions from the great chateaux, just from curiosity. Equally, I wonât be in any rush, so wouldnât expect lightning posting.
Iâm with Robert - I keep trying to go with fashion and dislike Bordeaux but I canât help myself - another bottle gets opened and I love it again. After 2016 and 2018 (and not forgetting 2015), I donât need lots more but if the quality and price is right, like Robert Iâll be looking at a couple of cases and actually would like to contemplate slightly higher up the tree than usual. So Iâm definitely interested but it doesnât need to be on the Burgundy 18 scale.
Iâll echo what Robert Stanier said and add that there is so much good value in Bordeaux outside the iconic names - which I cannot buy anyway. If you want to be providing a real consumer service when tasting your way around an en primeur campaign, that would best be done by finding us the exciting over-performers, not by telling us which of the grandees have done slightly better or slightly worse this year.
I canât get excited over whether Ch Mouton-Rothschild is 19 and Ch Margaux is âonlyâ 18.5. I try to avoid scores anyway, but what I want to know is where I can get a 17.5 from Haut-MĂ©doc.
The best example over the past 11 years has been JRâs discovery of the quality being achieved at Ch Capbern, starting in 2009. We all got the message, we all bought the wine and weâre all seriously pleased as a direct result of your research.
Capbern 2016 (tasted blind with a whole load of other 2016 St-EstĂšphes) is another bargain.
I will be publishing my tasting notes of this massive blind tasting of about 200 red 216 bordeaux this Wednesday and Thursday. Whites tomorrow.
The honesty in the purple page reviews offer invaluable assistance for those of us that cannot attend too many tastings and are at the mercy of our trusted merchants being increasingly economic with the truth when putting their own reviews together whilst banging the sales drum. Overall purchases for 2018 burgundy/ 2019 Bordeaux will be more restrained as a result of merchant over-hype & dizzying price increases. Many of the 2017/ 2018 EP purchases are better bargains for those who wait and avoid EP, particularly for those without a designer label/ address.
I for one, believe that tasting EP is a crapshoot, and not likely to be representative of what you get in the bottle. However, I will be buying 5-6 12 bottle casesof 2019 in total, so guidance will be essential towards those, like Capbern 16, that offer exceptional quality at modest pricing. I know this is easier said than done!
Relatively new to the Bordeaux scene. And to JR also.
However, 2019 is the year our first daughter was born. So I will almost certainly buy something memorable. Though in Australia, Bordeaux is a very niche market. Whether it be 2019 Penfolds Grange (will not be released for several years) or Bordeaux is yet to be seen. I would love to see a dissertation of the difference in nuance and terroir between the first growths.
Will probably buy one or two bottles of first and perhaps a case of a super second. Which is yet to be answered.
How easy would it be to obtain a case of Grange at opening price?
Very Easy. This is Australia. Locally, either direct from vineyard or my wine broker would reserve me an allocation. Miss the boat and itâs a little harder but still doable.
I like the honesty too. I especially admired one year when Richard did the reviews and he did the en primeur tasting blind where possible. That threw up some interesting reviews but I think I am right in saying that by bad luck he only got to do the 2013s, which must have Taken some of the joy out of theoccasion.
I always used to taste the primeurs blind and bitterly regret the decision of the Bordelais powers-that-be to summarily outlaw blind tasting. See point 2 in this report from 2016 about new arrangements for tasting the 2015s en primeur:
https://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/bordeaux-primeurs-tastings-shrunk
For what its worth, I think nicks.com.au offer Bordeaux en-primeur. Iâve never bought from them, though, so I donât know how good their service is. But unfortunately Bordeaux is fairly niche in Australia â and the ones that are better value arenât imported in favour of more well known big names.
Personally I love reading en primeur reports even if I am not intending to buy anything ; and I am certainly not intending to buy anything this year ( canât really afford it anymore now Iâm retired) .
However , Caveat emptor ! Through no fault of their own PP tasters can deliver quite different impressions of a wine once in bottle and with a bit of age . Consider these two descriptions of 2016 Montlandrie : this one tasted en primeur and given 17 points with drink dates of 2021-29 ,
Very deep crimson. Intense nose. Sweet start and very dramatic. This should be worth looking out for over the next few vintages. Real improvement this year!
and this one posted today on JRâs Southwold tastings of 2016 right bank wines ; 16 points , drink dates 2026-40 ,⊠Tasted blind. Perfumed and floral nose. Sweet start and then tannin rather than acid dominates. Just a bit too tannic for the delicacy of the fruit but I do like the nose.
Point being , and as we all know , wines change in bottle , there is bottle variation etc etc . So if one bases oneâs buying choices on the basis of an en primeur tasting soyez prudent !..but then who knows what will happen to the wine in another 3 years or so ???
En Primeur is always not without risk ; although often cheaper (and more readily available) than after the wine has been bottled. As to Australian providers: nicks.com.au are one of the largest independent retailers in Australia (Melbourne) and Langtons is a subsidiary of a large retail group (Woolsworths). Access to well known names has never been an issue, even outside of Bordeaux (for instance, I just purchased a bottle of La Mouline from the Rhone).
My wine broker informs me that they are not tasting the Bordeaux 2019 until March/April and will revert to me in due course. However, he also informs me that 2019 is yet again, likely to be a promising year; not to mention at First Growth or Super Second (e.g. cos dâestournel) one is unlikely to find the bottling unacceptable at that level.
Time will tell. 2019 being the birth year of my daughter, I imagine anything I buy probably wonât be opened till the 18th or 21st birthday. I would not stick a Coravin into a First Growth on the risk that the re-seal did not take, even though I always put a small drop of sealing wax on top of the access hole. So would have no way of knowing whether the bottle is a lemon until my Wine Broker has well and truly retired!
Yes, thatâs generally true â though sadly itâs less true for lesser well known producers, and thatâs often where the good value can be found. I was going to give Ch Capbern as an example (since itâs been discussed here as being good value), but wine-searcher.com suggests itâs available interstate. Maybe I just need to move to Melbourne or Sydney? 
Yes please, whilst I buy far less than in the past, Bordeaux is still important to the fine wine market in general and team Jancis provide some of the best, most impartial tasting notes.
Yes please, alway interesting to find out which vineyards are doing well and for consistency.
Looking to invest in a mixture of good value drinking wine and also some super seconds / Saint emillion and pomerol if the price is right.
Thank you, the reports are always so informative and exactly what I need.
Dear Jancis, Julia and Richard
You must get hundreds of emails like this but please let me finish before you bin me!
Last year at the primeurs in Bordeaux I bumped into Natalia Vremea who is Export Manager and a fine welcome front for the Art Russe Chateau La Grace Dieu des Prieurs at Saint-Emilion and, as an architect, I was most interested to learn during discussions about, and visit for the first time, the now-completed spectacular renovation and magnificent idiosyncratic extension work by Jean Nouvel, who is surely one of the best French architects working today?
I was also presented with a small glass to taste of their 2018 vintage as was my wont that week across Bordeaux in this lovely vintage, now being better understood by way of subscribing, as I do, to your informing website.
I have absolutely no axe to grind, nor any skin in their game, with La Grace Dieu as I am simply a passionate wine lover across many countries but, and it is a big but, I do feel that this wine enterprise is grossly unknown and that it should be more closely followed.
Louis Mitjavile (Francoisâ son at LTR in Saint-Emilion too) and proprietor at Domaine LâAurage at Castillon, is the consultant winemaker with Pedro Ruiz as his right-hand man there. The wine was superb that year from barrel, lush, ripe to the point of ready to drink, firm but yielding to super-fruit and very, very Mitjavile, and very expensive too!
You must visit this year for their 2019; I will be there with wine friends by appointment with Natalia on the Monday 30th March, and I strongly suggest that you will benefit the wine trade worldwide by going there too and to taste for yourself. The buildings are astoundingly fine too.
This is the website:
âŠand I have attached below their 2019 Primeurs tasting invitation (and a map) for an appointment whilst you are in Saint-Emilion anyway.
I am also attaching the covers of my impending âlivretsâ which i will conclude when I retire at the close of 2021. They are a microcosm of the Bordeaux scene with especial regard to the mall farmer/vignerons, and eating houses in the outlying areas of the region.
With my very kind regards.
Yours sincerely,
Bryan
Bryan Davies RIBA ï»ż Chartered architect, wine writer, Bordeaux book author
(âLes Autres Secrets de Bordeaux: Canon Fronsac & Fronsacâ + others) , photographer ï»ż .
Director for Kavan Davies Architecture Limited
Offtel: 01296 431161 Mobtel: 07958 383926
First Floor, 7-11, Temple Street, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire HP20 2RN
and
In emergencies only, at home: ï»ż!
The Old School, Just below the church, Nether Winchendon,
Buckinghamshire HP18 0DY
Homtel: 01844 290441 Mobtel: 07958 383926
Project: Vins 2020 a 15:20 GMT le vendredi 6 mars 2020
2019PrimeursInvitationChateauLaGraceDieudesPrieursInvitationMarch30toApril32020|353x500
Due to the availability of lots of Bordeaux wines from older vintages, I am not really considering buying Bordeaux 2019 en primeur. I think especially compared to Burgundy it is much easier to get access to some wines who are five or ten years old (or even older) from Bordeaux. However, it is always nice to read the very competent and informative coverage here on Bordeaux en primeur tastings on the Purple Pages, which I read every year. So, although I am most likely not buying wines en primeur this year, I will still read the articles about the new vintage.
