Uncertain Smile: Bordeaux 2019

BY NEAL MARTIN | JUNE 16, 2020

Left Bank: Saint-Estèphe | Pauillac | Saint-Julien | Margaux | Pessac-Léognan | Haut-Médoc/Médoc & Bordeaux Supérieur | Listrac-Médoc/Moulis

Right Bank: Pomerol | Saint-Émilion | Sauternes | Satellites

The château proprietor is ruing that COVID-19 struck before and not after en primeur. Talk about bad timing. Dressed in full PPE, gloves, rose-tinted visor and protective body suit embroidered with château logo, he thinks to himself, “We could have kept quiet for a few weeks. Waited for the final release then issued a brief statement along the lines of, ‘Oh, and by the way, there is a pathogen that’s going to kill thousands of people’.” Fortunately, his PA, standing behind yellow and black duct tape stuck to the parquet floor exactly two meters from her boss’s desk, is oblivious to his immoral train of thought. She stares at a whiteboard scrawled with superlatives and euphemisms locked and loaded for the canceled primeur campaign and begins to wipe away last year’s rehashed hyperbole.

“Stop. We can still use them,” the manager exclaims. “You know the saying: Nothing is certain in life except for death, taxes and en primeur.”

Fixing him with a gimlet eye, she asks, “Apart from a highly contagious and potentially fatal virus for which there is presently no vaccine, plummeting stock markets, a restaurant industry staring into an abyss, millions self-isolating in their homes, social distancing that prevents families attending funerals of their loved ones, unfavorable exchange rates, 25% import duties and the inconvenient truth that Bordeaux is not Burgundy, do you believe this is the right time to launch the vintage of the century?”

“It is the PERFECT climate,” he retorts. “Everyone needs cheering up. What can be better than investing in our fabulous new wine?”

“A vaccine?”

“Pah! Nothing a few sunrays and detergent can’t cure. If vines can overcome phylloxera, then mankind can defeat COVID-19.”

“Vines didn’t overcome phylloxera. They were pulled up. It took decades to recover. Are you suggesting we replace the entire human race with a Covid-resistant life-form?”

Inured to her sarcasm, he continues: “Well, they obviously didn’t use the right biodynamic preparation. There’s nothing a bit of yarrow cannot cure as long as Uranus is in the right position.”

“May I suggest we wait until next year to release the 2019 and...”

“Let me stop you right there,” he interrupts. “We must release the wine.”

“Presumably with a large discount in accordance with these perilous times.”

“With a price commensurate with the incontrovertible quality of the wine and 15% higher than our neighbor. Marketing has already told me that 100 points is guaranteed, apart from that stingy Martin fellow. He’s back this year, isn’t he?”

“We couriered sample to his home. We dropped in a tube of hydroxychloroquine, a face-mask autographed by the cellarmaster and a KFC token as a ‘get well’ gesture.”

“Great.”

“Look, the only way we could sell our Grand Vin at the price you intend is if the World Health Organization discovers that our wine cures COVID-19, the only side effect being a loss of inhibition and the giggles.”

“Is that possible?”

“No.”

“Couldn’t marketing imply it might be?”

“No.”

He slumps into his chair. Everything is conspiring against him – well, everything apart from the growing season. Deep down he knows he has a stupendous wine on his hands. Why feel guilty about success? Why demean it with a cheap price that would displease shareholders? His 2019 puts a smile on his face, but it is shrouded by these uncertain times. There’s that nagging thought in the back of his mind: Will anyone want to buy them?

Every sample in this report was tasted here in my garden office using the same wine glass and listening to the same music – Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet performed by Heinrich Geuser on vinyl. I originally bought it when I was learning to play it myself, for anyone thinking I do not appreciate classical music.

Why Bother?

Having missed en primeur last year for the first time since 1997, I was looking forward to getting back in the saddle. However, as the ominous implications of COVID-19 dawned throughout February/March and France became one of the contagion’s epicenters, clearly something as trivial as en primeur could not proceed. Initially, my intention was to write a brief report comprising mainly less-well-known names. As the peak of the virus passed, speculation rose that a campaign was feasible, the kindling from a core of merchants and courtiers who did not fancy revenues of 2% of bugger-all. The Bordeaux machinery cranked into action and, as is often the case, châteaux acted like a shoal of fish and swam in another direction.

If critics could not come to Bordeaux, then Bordeaux would come to the critic. This change in mindset turned a trickle of samples into a deluge, pallets materializing on my doorstep to the point where next door’s builders assumed I had an acute drinking problem. 

Why bother? That is a question that some have justifiably asked. Why bother when the campaign was prefaced by apparently negligible demand for purchasing expensive unfinished wines called “futures” when the future is so unpredictable?

The answer is simple.

A wine critic has a duty to review the new vintage irrespective of circumstances. They have a duty to provide the best report possible so that the readers who subscribe and make independent reviewing possible are able to read, criticize or ignore as they wish. Sitting out a vintage and deciding what subscribers can or cannot read is not an option, and that is why this report exists. In addition, it seems like there is consumer demand out there. Who knew, eh?

Pluses and Minuses Tasting At Home