The F-Word: Bordeaux 2017

BY NEAL MARTIN | MAY 1, 2018

“Don’t break my heart. My achy breaky heart...” The château manager turns down Billy Ray Cyrus as his BMW swings into the château courtyard and his eyes set upon a scene straight out of the apocalyptic climax of Sharknado 3. Staff are screaming and running around in panic. He looks up into the sky. No tornado. No sharks. Hm...it must be a root day. His secretary, mascara streaming down her cheeks, bangs on the driver window. Should he wind it down? Whatever words come out of her mouth are going to ruin his day.

“FROST” she exclaims. “We’re doomed!”

He racks his brain. Frost. Frost. Frost? He’s heard about it somewhere. Isn’t it some viral disease that only affects Burgundy? His stomach lurches. He grabs a copy of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Wine, rips off the cellophane and looks under “F” just as the telephone rings. It is the Cayman Island-based billionaire owner, yet to deign the property with his sun-tanned presence. Things have not been going well. His boss’s first idea had been to sell the 2016 vintage using Bitcoin, which backfired when an overnight plunge rendered it worth about a dollar per bottle, still approximately 100 cents more than most are willing to pay for Sauternes. His second move had been to lobby the EU to make “Bordeaux Bashing illegal” under the Human Rights Act and then make a promotional video on sexual confusion narrated by Kevin Spacey.

“Good morning, Sir,” says the château manager as breezily as possible. “How are...”

“We have frost. Why?”

“Err...yes Sir.”

“You’re paid to stop these things happening.”

“Well, we suffered exceptionally low overnight temperatures and a drop in wind and...”

“We’re biodynamic. Bury more cow’s udders. Write another vintage poem. Do a funny dance in the vineyard.”

“Um...I don’t think...”

“You had better get this sorted or you’ll be going to the abattoir like those useless horses we bought last year.”

The château manager pictures “Rudolf” and “Steiner”, prancing through the vines like enslaved My Little Ponies during last year’s campaign, sent trotting to the abattoir as soon as the last journalist had left. Ping! It’s a new message from his vineyard manager that reads in stress-inducing capitals: “BLACK FROST”. The seriousness of the situation is indicated by three sad emojis...and an ice cream. Presumably his finger slipped onto the wrong emoticon. Black is bad. Black Death. Black Sabbath. Blackpool. Black frost? Why can’t it be rainbow frost - sounds less serious. The phone rings again. It’s über-famous consultant. His last pearl of wisdom was to buy amphora because apparently it is now impossible to make Claret without them. To save money he ordered half-a-dozen from Amazon and sure enough, a container of used plant pots arrived the following day. Phone beeps. That pesky blogger has put a bloody selfie on Instagram, posing next to a forlorn blackened vine with a proclamation of a “2017 D.O.A.” to his six followers. That’s it. That’s enough. His heart is achy and breaky. To console his sorrows he raids the château’s private reserve and cracks open a 1961 and dreams of a frost-free vintage, just like that one. 

The Growing Season

This summary of the growing season is based around the annual report by Bill Blatch and that of Professor Laurence Geny and Dr. Alex Marchal at the Oenological Research Unit at University of Bordeaux, which was authored by the late Denis Dubourdieu for many years. Once the first draft is written, I weave in information from numerous tête-à-têtes with winemakers plus personal observations gleaned from visits throughout the year. Finally, I whisk in a couple of jokes and wry asides as Easter eggs for those that read the whole bloomin’ thing. Those wishing to skip this part can read the bullet points above. But if you want to understand some of the minutiae of the growing season and how particularly meteorological events sculpted the 2017s, some more discrete than others, then read on.

Whilst it feels natural to examine a growing season tout seul, in reality the temporal influence upon the vintage extends beyond bud-break or 1 January. The purview should include the previous season and beyond. Think of it like a meteorological solera: the further back you go, the more negligible the influence, but an influence all the same. For example, consider how the water table depends not only on the rainfall that season, but also the preceding seasons. In this respect, just consider that 2017 followed two comparatively dry growing seasons that produced a flurry of great wines.