Weekly Tasting Report (Jan 11-17): 2018 Bordeaux, Beaujolais, Germany, Piedmont
James tastes over Zoom with managing director of Château Margaux Philippe Bascaules, who was able to produce balanced yet rich young wines in 2018.
Last week we rated some pretty amazing wines, from perfect-rated Bordeaux 2018s to super quality dry rieslings from the Rheingau. There’s just so much excellent wine in the marketplace at the moment and more to come. And we are reviewing between 400 and 500 a week.
About 250 of the more than 400 rated wines last week for this report were 2018 Bordeaux and the vintage is a fantastic one. It is clearly in the same league as the most recent top years from France’s premier wine region including 2015, 2016, and 2019.
Not only have I been tasting hundreds of 2018 Bordeaux, I have also been conducting numerous Zoom interviews on Bordeaux’s newest vintage in the market, and there’s more to come. This week, among others, I spoke to Edouard Moueix, whose family owns prestigious estates such as Trotanoy, La Fleur Petrus and Belair-Monange, and Philippe Bascaules, managing director of the first growth estate Chateau Margaux. Both made incredible wines in 2018, which subscribers can check out below for the score and tasting note. They both agree how very special 2018 is as a high quality vintage for Bordeaux.
I was fascinated to hear Philippe Bascaules describe how the 2018 vintage produced such small and wonderfully ripened berries that they could have made a wine overly tannic and powerful but they were extremely careful in the way they fermented and macerated the grapes during the winemaking process. “Some vats we didn’t even need to pump over and used an infusion process instead,” he said. The fine quality and intensity of the Margaux tannins in 2018 are indeed incredible.
“The wines are much more approachable than I thought, especially at Margaux,” he added. “The tannins are so fine and integrated. So I don’t think we will have to wait 20 years to drink this vintage.” Check out our full Zoom conversation here.
Edouard Moueix reported using similar winemaking techniques to make balanced and refined wines and remarked on the quality of the phenolics in 2018. “We like to define the quality of a vintage in Bordeaux on the shape of the tannins,” he said during the Zoom interview. “And since we had a perfect year for maturing the tannins, despite the difficulties, the tannins are perfectly ripe and therefore there are no angles in the tannins. The tannins were just coming immediately (during the fermentations). The tannins are present but they are soft and round.” You can listen in to our conversation here.
James tastes with Edouard Moueix, who described how 2018 was a perfect year for maturing tannins.
We also tasted a number of top dry white Bordeaux, and the 2018 made surprisingly refreshing and structured wines. I thought the hot summer would have produced big and rich wines but most winemakers harvested early to make fresh and dynamic wines. It will be interesting to see if the bright and fresh 2017 dry white are really better than the 2018s.
“I think that the white wines in the Medoc, specifically Margaux, were fresher than Pessac-Leognan,” said Bascaules. “We have the style of 2017 in our 2018 even though 2017 was one of the best vintages for Pavillon Blanc (Margaux’s white wine.) We have the tension. We have a complex aroma. And the finish is very fresh.”
Also, don’t miss the old vintages of Leoville Las Cases in this report including 2004, 2001, 1998, 1995 and 1988. I tasted the wines with the property’s general manager, Pierre Graffeuille via Zoom, and they will soon be released together in a special five-bottle case. All the wines are very beautiful now to drink. My favorites were the 1995 and 1988. Stay tuned for the video.
Last week’s tasting in our Hong Kong office was not just Bordeaux from France, however. We also reviewed a range of whites and reds from Georges Duboeuf and his 2019 Beaujolais were outstanding quality. The wines seem to have a little more tannin structure than the fruitier 2018s. We have found the same with the handful of really top domaine-produced Bojos from the vintage such as the M. & C. Lapierre Morgon 2019, which is one of the best wines from the region from this gorgeous year. It’s another excellent year for Beaujolais!
Our Contributing Editor Stuart Pigott rated the wines from a few key German wine producers as well last week including Martin Mullen from the Mosel Valley and J.B. Becker from the Rheingau. I was particularly interested in the ratings for Becker’s newly released 2019 because I had coincidentally tasted a dozen or so old vintages from Becker in Hong Kong last week at the offices of wine merchant Ginsberg & Chan, including an old and dusty JB Becker Rheingau Spatburgunder Wallufer Walkenberrg Spatlese Troken 1988 and a JB Becker Rheingau Riesling Spatlese Wallufer Berg Bildstock Trocken 1990. Both were holding on nicely considering their age but I think the Beckers are making much better and more precise wines today. Their J.B. Becker Riesling Rheingau Wallufer Walkenberg Auslese Trocken is a great wine year in and year out.
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- Both James and Contributing Editor Stuart Pigott tasted JB Becker wines this week in different parts of the world.
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- Chateau Canon produced one of the high-scoring Bordeaux highlights of our tastings last week.
There are a few Italian wines to check from Piedmont’s Vite Colte and Tuscany’s Rocca delle Macie as well as Sicily’s Feudo Maccari. I was impressed with the freshness of Vite Colte’s 2017 Barolos, which some of you might expect to be jammy and slightly heavy. But they were fresh and showed solid structure with ripe fruit. The 2017 vintage looks to be the third year in a row for excellent nebbiolos following 2015 and 2016.
We tasted a couple of dozen Portuguese reds as well, mostly from the Douro Valley. Nearly all were outstanding quality. Plus, there’s about a dozen outstanding wines from New Zealand and Napa Valley.
I hope you enjoyed the report as well as the list below. Some incredible bottles were rated!
– James Suckling, editor
The list of wines below are bottles tasted and rated in the previous week by James and other tasters at JamesSuckling.com. They include many latest releases not yet in the market, but entering soon. Some will be included in upcoming tasting reports.