A New Bordeaux, Aged to Perfection
If you are not familiar with Bordeaux, it undulates. As you travel up the left bank of the assertively cool Gironde river, the flat, elevated plains of the Médoc drop off slowly but definitely into rolling mounds. There are no mountains in Bordeaux, like there are in Napa Valley. There is no ridge crafted by millions of tectonic-shifting years, like Burgundy. There is no steep gorge that inspires pale faces, like the Mosel. There are just rolling hills of gravel that give way to the classic limestone-and-clay that produces the world’s best wines.
Those rolling hills of the left bank are famous for Cabernet Sauvignon. It is (at least for now) cool enough to keep the grape from becoming a tannic bomb. The soils impart gorgeously seductive secondary notes of graphite, cigar, and more than a touch of green bell pepper. The ripe cherries and currants are as free-flowing, austere, and honest as plainsong. And as the wine ages in the bottle, it grows an enchanting, refined musk unlike any other age note from the old or new worlds.
After the Médoc plain dips and then rolls, three appellations blend consecutively from west to east: St-Estèphe, Pauillac, and St-Julien. Pauillac is the home of Bordeaux’s quintessential châteaux: Lafite-Rothschild, Mouton-Rothschild, and Latour. Their wines are freshly fruited, rigorously structured, oaked, and subtle, with just a hint of cigar box and the expectation of supreme longevity. They are at once complex, elegant, and powerful, grown on gravel mounds no higher than 30 meters (98 feet). Further upriver, St-Julien is more clay-and-limestone, and the Cabernet Sauvignon is bold, seductive, highly perfumed, and dense. No houses codify the taste of St-Julien than the aristocratic Château Léoville-Las Casas and Château Léoville-Barton.
St-Éstephe has its own particulars of soil and style. Gravel washes out into clay-and-limestone, but deeper and less stony than in St-Julien. The emphasis here is on finessed, graceful Cabernet Sauvignon, flavorfully bursting on the palate with a delightful mineral structure. St-Estèphe has a leg up on its neighbors too. The clay is heavy here, heavier than in St-Julien. As a result, the rains drain slower and irrigation is easier. This slow-draining, wetter soil will help St-Éstephe maintain itself for a bit longer into the climatic Götterdämmerung.
While not legendary, the 2015 Bordeaux vintage was memorably excellent. March and April were balmy, near ideal spring months along the Gironde. By May, a short but not excessive heatwave was perfect for budbreak throughout the region. As flowers and fruit blossomed, June rains kept up a gentle cycle of heat and cool, irrigation and dryness in which Cabernet Sauvignon thrives. July, however, saw an extended early period of drought and heat, weeks earlier than would be expected. Wildfires broke out in Pessac-Léognan, where much Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon white grapes are grown. August brought rain, but in the form of deluges, one after another. September and October reverted back to historic expectations, and a potentially deleterious summer ended in a splendid fall.
The champion of St-Estèphe Cabernet Sauvignon is Château Cos d'Estournel (the “s” is pronounced in “Cos”) Behind wrought-iron gates sits an ancien régime castle that personifies the wines that come from its cellars: dark, structured, and ageworthy, marked by particular power and succulence. The 2015 vintage of Cos d’Estournel was as excellent as the season turned out. It is a full-bodied affair, with a haunting aroma of nutmeg and cloves. The fruits are firm - plums and blackberries. This is a highly textured wine, with ultra-fine tannins that evoke dry and dusty earth. With almost a decade in the bottle, the wine has become less firm and pugnacious, more opulent and beguiling. The complexity of this wine will amaze you as it develops in the decanter throughout the evening.
The Wine Press has once more opened its library for you to purchase the 2015 Château Cos d’Estournel 2ème Cru Classé, St-Estèphe. Only five examples are available, at Brookline, Fenway, or our website.
