2006, 2005 and 2004 Bordeaux
As recently as 15 years ago, a growing season like 2006 would have yielded a mostly mediocre set of wines, and most estates would either have vinified green fruit or been overwhelmed by rotten berries. But, at the level of today's financially sound chateaux at least, the work in the vineyards and at harvest time is far more precise today, multiple sorting tables have allowed properties to eliminate sub-par fruit, and vinification has become much more sophisticated. The high prices the best estates receive for their wines have enabled many chateaux to bottle only their best lots as their flagship wine. It should be noted, however, that the overwhelming majority of lesser properties cannot afford to make certain improvements in their vineyards, winery or barrel cellar, so the gap between rich and poor continues to grow.
Two thousand six is a heterogeneous vintage that resists generalizations. The keys to quality were the work in the vineyards, which not only was extremely labor-intensive but required a great deal of thought (and luck); the timing of the harvest; and the determination of which lots would go into a chateau's grand vin. I liked Pomerol for the silky texture and sweet middle palates of the best wines. Here much merlot was harvested early and ripe, before the September rains damaged the fruit. But with very few exceptions these wines are not in the same class as 2005, and they cannot be compared to the great '98s in sheer class, aromatic complexity and grip. St. Emilion and the right bank satellite appellations were less consistent, but plenty of good wines were made, especially on clay and limestone soils and on well-drained slopes. Many proprietors admitted that their cabernet franc began to deteriorate by the end of the rainy period in September and ultimately lacked intensity; on the other hand, well-heeled owners of some of the region's micro-estates can farm and harvest their vines with such precision that they routinely begin with fruit that is far superior to that of their neighbors.
This spring I started my tastings on the right bank, then moved over to Graves and the Medoc. It was in the Medoc, particularly in Pauillac and St. Julien, that I found the majority of my own personal vintage highlights, although here the best wines relied heavily on cabernet sauvignon, and the merlot was generally much less impressive. St. Estephe, which by some accounts received more rainfall in September than appellations farther south, was something of an underperformer in 2006; here, on the whole, I prefer 2004. There are plenty of successful wines from Margaux, where wine quality in general has improved in recent years. The same thing can be said about the wines of Graves and Pessac-Leognan, where there are numerous successes in 2006, beginning with Haut-Brion and La Mission. On the whole, though, the dry white wines here are even better in the context of the year: they offer compelling aromatic complexity and freshness allied to thorough ripeness, as most of the best of them were harvested before the brunt of the September rains (Haut-Brion began on August 29!). I will not offer notes on the 2006 Sauternes until next year, but there were few obvious standouts in my early tastings of these wines, as there was a lot of grey rot to weed out from the positive botrytis virtually from the beginning to the end of the harvest.
The 2006 growing season. Following a cold winter and considerable rainfall in March, the spring was extremely dry, with scarce precipitation in June, and the flowering took place mostly in ideal and very warm conditions, with some minor problems with coulure (poor fruit set) in the earliest-flowering merlot. From the outset, the potential size of the crop was average. July was then very hot and dry (the average temperature for the month reportedly ranked this as the hottest July since 1950), although a few light showers revived the vines and the process of veraison (the change in color of the berries) began slowly. At this point, conditions resembled those of 2005 and 2003, and the region anticipated an outstanding and somewhat early harvest. On the other hand, growers who pulled leaves early in the season risked having their grapes burned by the intense sunshine in July, as a heat wave settled in during the second half of the month. By the end of July, heat and some drought stress put an end to vine growth, so the energy of the plants could be concentrated on ripening the fruit, which is normally the formula for a successful crop of wines.