Ch. Pontet-Canet, Bordeaux

And we’re off! The morning dew lays heavy on the manicured lawns of the northern Médoc as we snake our way up the D2, cutting through the vines from the outskirts of Margaux. Destination: Ch. Beychevelle to taste the first barrel sample of 2017. It’s en primeur week, one of the busiest five days in the wine tasting calendar. A frenetic dash around the vineyards of Bordeaux, crossing both sides of the Gironde travelling between châteaux, villages and communes. From now until Friday we will visit more than 60 properties sipping, spitting and slurping our way through more than 300 barrel samples of the 2017 vintage in what is known as ‘en primeur’ the practice whereby the cask samples of the previous vintage are previewed to wine merchants, brokers, negociants and the press. Throughout the week I will be travelling with the Berry Bros. & Rudd Bordeaux buying team, led by Max Lalondrelle and will be updating you on the quality of the wines, interviewing winemakers, analysing and tasting the wines and providing a first impression of the quality of the vintage. It is a week one Château owner once described to me as: ‘the Oscars, Cannes film festival and Formula One rolled into one.’

Only this year the buzz is a little more muted. After the success of 2015 and 2016, growing seasons which produced wines that were not only easy to taste but also possessed pure, attractive fruit with glorious fresh acidity 2017 comes amidst a background of uncertainty. Talk has been of the late April frosts which hit the region last year, the worst since 1991 and in some cases like Château Angludet in Margaux or Climens in Sauternes wiping out the entire crop. According to British winemaker Gavin Quinney’s harvest report, the overall Bordeaux yield was down by as much as 40 percent on 2016 and 33 percent lower than the ten-year average. As he points out, that is the equivalent of more than 300 million bottles.

But there is good news. Firstly, the frost was very localised, as Berry Bros. & Rudd’s Fine Wine Buying Director and Bordeaux Buyer Max Lalondrelle explains the frost primarily hit the Côtes de Castillon, Côtes de Blaye, St. Emilion and Pomerol on the Right Bank and on the Left Bank only those estates that are situated more than one kilometre from the Gironde. Very few of the big estates have been affected. To underline this point in Pauillac, Saint Estèphe and St Julien 2017 was in fact a larger crop than the previous five years.

Day one on an en primeur tasting trip is far too early to be making judgment calls on the quality of the vintage, especially in a complicated growing season like 2017 where quality is uneven. But from the barrel samples we tasted in St Julien and Pauillac 2017 is a much lighter style than say 2009, 2010 or 2015. They possess charming red fruit, fresh acidity but perhaps lack the body and weight of the so called five star vintages. As a first snapshot they reminded me of vintages like 2001 and 2014, years that when you pull the cork now in some cases are sensational to drink.

As Didier Cuvelier, proprietor of Ch. Léoville Poyferré said, it isn’t 2015 or 2016 but it is still very good. “It has the charm of 2012, the elegance and finesse of 2015 and the power of 2014.” The day finished at Ch. Pontet-Canet where they have made a charming wine with pure red fruit, an attractive silkiness on the mid palate and a persistent, long finish. I jotted down in my notebook, ‘a wine that will give pleasure but in a lighter style.’

Follow the blog for all of this week’s Bordeaux 2017 en primeur coverage. Find all the Bordeaux 2017 wines and further information here.