A Century of…Fours 

BY NEAL MARTIN | JUNE 06, 2024

Driving through Fleurie last spring, I noticed the streets festooned with flowers and buntings. Inquisitive, I asked about the upcoming festival. My driver, a local, enlightened me about La Fête des Conscrits.

Between December and May every year, villages across Beaujolais, and to a lesser extent Jura and Alsace, celebrate the cadre of residents born in years ending in the same number. This chronological tradition began in 1880, a valedictory parade for men entering military service. During years of conflict, they marched through the streets in front of cheering loved ones, the unspoken understanding that not everyone will return. In recent and more peaceful times, any person born in the appropriate year can participate, well, all except the women of Villefranche. Even though the town hosts the largest Conscrits, it remains an outmoded, men-only affair. Participants dress in costumes in their number’s assigned color, and villages host banquets, church services and concerts, of course, with a cheeky glass of Gamay or two. Hence, in 2024, it is the turn of the ‘fours,’ and anyone born in 2014, 2004, 1994 and so forth, back to the oldest living person, is eligible. Les Conscrits extends beyond an annual knees-up. Communities coalesce around these groups, freemasonry without the funny handshakes, nurturing fidelity between members who help each other out for potentially their entire lives, a social glue unifying generations in an age when young and old seem increasingly disparate.

The Crystal Palace Stadium.

Forgive the digression. Apart from wishing to relate this parochial heart-warming tradition, it strikes me that my annual “Centuries of…” article follows the same rubric:  a chronological shepherding of tasting notes into a single article, analogous to young and old marching in lockstep onto your screen. Introduced a few years ago, recognizing that wine lovers, including myself, celebrate anniversaries or milestones with wines that share the same birth year since inception, it’s been one of my favorite articles to research and write.

This year, the spotlight shines upon wine born in a vintage ending in four. Confined to Bordeaux, it is far from a roll-call of lauded vintages, more a minefield of seasons that winemakers prefer to forget. Perversely, that makes them more intriguing. Isn’t it fascinating to scythe through history to explore the unknown? We travel all the way back to 1904 and veer down lesser-trodden seasons such as 1914, 1944, 1954 and 1984, pertinent reminders never to write off a vintage by dint of reputation and hearsay. This report never fails to spring surprises.

This year, the format is tweaked. Firstly, I decided to publish the 2014 Bordeaux as a separate article on Vinous because they don’t inhabit the same realm of maturity as vintages with more on the odometer. Claret needs a couple of decades before it can call itself “grown up,” less of a truism for Burgundy that obliges less time to mature. To this end, I augment the claret with a herd of 2014s from the Côte d’Or since the theme is temporal, not geographical. These notes are culled from various domaine visits during my barrel tastings last year, interpolated with bottles from Alsace, South Africa and California, the latter a useful juxtaposition against Bordeaux.

Previous “Centuries of…” have been structured along two axes. The x-axis is vintage, and the y-axis is cultural context, music, film and events pertaining to that year. Great idea for a book. This year, recognizing that the Vinous parish is full of sporty types, the y-axis is a parallel timeline narrating the history of the FA Cup, the world’s longest-running knockout football* competition. A sport now watched by four billion avid fans, its origin dates back to 16 March 1872, when the Royal Engineers took on Wanderers at the Kennington Oval, a venue now synonymous with cricket**. The rules were still being codified back then, and players came almost exclusively from public schools. Researching these finals unearthed vignettes that impart a sense of time and hopefully render this piece more interesting to read.

*For disambiguation amongst my American cousins, we are talking soccer, not that other “sport” where men in helmets and shoulder pads run around like children playing tag and inexplicably stop every ten seconds.

**Another sport invented by the English that present-day fans have difficulty accepting gives us absolutely no preordained right to be the best.  

As usual, these notes derive from three sources: multiple tastings at various châteaux, the annual Académie du Vin shindig in Bordeaux and a dinner hosted by Olivier Bernard at Domaine de Chevalier whereby guests proffer bottles blind. These are augmented with ad hoc notes from soirées in London, New York and Hong Kong. Readers should note that a vast majority of these notes come from bottles directly from châteaux that, to a great extent, obviates the issue of provenance. That said, I would like to remind readers of the oft-forgotten fact that entire productions were rarely bottled in a single run. Often, they were bottled in batches that gave rise to variation. Moreover, during wartime, the wines often underwent abnormally long élevages because of a lack of market or means of transport.

The Vintages: 1904-2014

1904 - Manchester City 1, Bolton Wanderers 0