2008 Bordeaux: A Day In A Life 

BY NEAL MARTIN | FEBRUARY 15, 2018

Woke up. Got outta bed. Dragged a comb across my head... You know, most people’s first day in their new job involves meeting Tracy on reception, after which you are introduced to the CEO who is rudely awoken from his afternoon snooze, learning the etiquette of the stationery cupboard, a quick tête-à-tête with the photo-copier, shown to your desk where you deliberate over exactly where to position the family photo, calling the IT department to ask why your computer refuses to co-operate and why the telephone is allergic to outside calls, an interminable hour-long gossip with “nosy Maureen” dishing out with salacious and unnecessarily biological detail about who is bedding who, by which time it is time to go home.

None of this applied to my first day at Vinous. There was no easing into the job and frankly I would not want it this way. Pinch punch first of the month, 1st February and it’s straight into London for the annual ten-year on Bordeaux tasting at merchants BI Wines & Spirits, then a mad dash across the capital to Heathrow and jump on a 747 to New York, whereupon I throw my luggage into a yellow cab that whisks me directly to a thronging Manhattan pizzeria to meet my new team whose names are instantly forgotten in a fug of jet-lagged lethargy and let’s just say that after my first day I will have no idea where the stationery cupboard is located.... But I do have a good idea how the Bordeaux 2008s are developing and so, as I forewarned AG, let’s turn it round pronto so that readers get an idea how things are going to roll. As I have done since the 1997s I tasted the 2008s from barrel during en primeur and since conducted two or three comprehensive horizontals to monitor their evolution.

The Growing Season

Coming off the back of the middling 2007 campaign the 2008s came as some relief. It was not destined to elicit the same frothing eulogies like 2009 and 2010 however, perusing my conversations with winemakers at the time, they were cautiously upbeat. Whilst tasting from barrel, Frédéric Engerer at Château Latour pointed at that the climactic conditions were the same as 1961 until mid-August, comparing them to 1996 albeit with a different balance or a fleshier version of 2004.