A Century of Bordeaux: The Eights

 BY NEAL MARTIN | MAY 23, 2018

One of Bordeaux’s greatest virtues is its ability to transcend time. Since its earliest days, Bordeaux’s natural inclination towards longevity coupled with crowd-pleasing volume has enabled devotees to build cellars and plunder mature vintages with almost wanton abandon. Enjoyment is derived not only from the quality of the wine, but also a sense of visceral experience of history and marvelling at the passage of time between insertion and extraction of cork. Nothing compares to the joy of mature Claret: it is more dependable than Burgundy and let’s face it, nowadays relatively cheaper. I spent my entire professional career delving into back vintages, diligently noting every bottle to accumulate a fairly substantial library of tasting notes. Each year I conduct ten-year and twenty-years on retrospectives to appraise how wines are evolving in bottle, singling out those that continue to climb, those cruising along their plateaux of maturity and those on the slippery slope heading towards a vinegary grave. These reports assuage my own fascination and hopefully serve as useful guides for the many that have cellars of mature Bordeaux. Of course, I use the word “guide” since there tends to be more variability with age. As the saying goes: there are no great wines, just great bottles. 

I intend for “A Century of Bordeaux” to be an annual feature. This article started out as modest retrospectives of 1988 and 1998 to complement the 2008 horizontal published days after I started at Vinous. Nearly all these bottles were tasted at châteaux during various visits (as an aside, the dearth of some châteaux’s library stock often beggars belief considering the scale of production.) Once this was completed, I realized that I was amassing tasting notes on legions of other wines that also ended in eight, in fact, a full complement of notes from every decade ending in that magic number spanning the last century, from a single bottle of 1918 onwards. Restricting our vintage purview to a numerical/chronological theme forces us to consider wines born in great growing seasons such as 1928, underrated seasons such as 1948 and for masochists like myself, maligned seasons, represented here Messrs 1938 and 1968. Unable to cherry-pick solely great vintages makes for a more intellectually rewarding exercise, even if you have encountered a few barely drinkable bottles on the way.

These notes derive from the annual Académie du Vin dinner in Bordeaux, all ex-château and often in large format, including a number of esoteric bottles from forgotten vintages, as well as various private dinners themed around vintages ending in “8”. Readers will find 200 tasting notes that cover the last century, and this excludes many withheld for numerous forthcoming vertical retrospectives. (I will tease you by stating that the best 1998 is not included although readers will not have to wait too long!) Each growing season is summarised with commentary upon the wines. In addition, I interweave a parallel story that enhances the idea of a mature bottle momentarily pausing the unstoppable movement of time; wine uniquely a historical relic that we can not only see or hold, but miraculously ingest and consume. It becomes part of us. As such, this article works best if you can spare precious time and read from start to finish, from then to now. 

So buckle up as we journey back to the last cries of battle in the final year of the Great War...

1918 Bordeaux – 100 Years On

In Balham, South London, eight-year-old Eric lives with his father Henry, a town surveyor for Wandsworth council and his mother Florence. Apart from the trauma of the Great War, the family is coping with the loss of Eric’s older sister Elsie, who had died the previous year...

Though 1918 is indelibly marked in history as the end of World War I, winemaking continued in Bordeaux. The day-to-day work was carried out predominantly by women since the men were in the trenches. Now long forgotten, 1918 was in fact a very decent wartime vintage with fine summer weather. Picking commenced on 24 September. Like many, I have little first-hand experience of the 1918 vintage, but a bottle of 1918 Citran opened at Domaine de Chevalier was a delightful century-old relic, a pertinent reminder that given sound provenance, you don’t have to fork out astronomical sums for First Growths to experience history. You know, First Growths do not have exclusivity on wines’ longevity...they just have a penchant for it.

1928 Bordeaux – 90 Years On