The 2001 vintage will always be in the shadow of its predecessor.
If I have two words of advice about Bordeaux's 2001s, they are: buy Sauternes.
Last autumn provided Bordeaux's often unjustly overlooked producers of sweet white wines with textbook conditions for making these unique jewels in the crown of the world's largest fine wine region.
Copies – fair, middling and sometimes extremely successful – of Bordeaux's red wines are made the world over but nowhere else, anywhere, can challenge the communes of Sauternes and Barsac for either quality or quantity of great, subtle and long-lived nectars made from Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc grapes shrivelled by botrytis, or noble rot.
Rain followed by fine, windy conditions in late September and October turned whole vineyards of grapes from plump golden yellow to shrivelled botrytis violet in Bordeaux's sweet wine vineyards. What with minuscule yields and intensive labour costs for successive pickings and selection, these essences are far more expensive to produce than most Bordeaux reds. Sweet white wine producers would be justified in increasing their prices this year, which is more than can be said for Bordeaux's red wine producers whose only sensible option is to reduce them considerably.
The more one tastes 2001 red bordeaux, the greater the 2000 vintage seems, especially on the left bank in the Médoc and Graves. The season began with a quite exceptionally wet winter, followed by a remarkably even flowering during a dry early summer – so much so that the right-bank crop was not reduced by the usual natural wastage of Merlot buds. The result is that summer crop-thinning was essential for any property with ambition, and many reds, St-Emilions in particular, are dilute or hollow in the mid-palate – however great the attempts to hide this with over-extraction and fancy oak treatments.
July was generally cool and wet, August hotter and drier, but there was, unlike 2000 and other recent vintages, no suggestion of drought so grapes tended to be larger than in 2000 with a lower ratio of flavour-rich skin to pulp. The ripening cycle was later than average, which became particularly critical for the late-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon planted in the Médoc and Graves, for the month of September was relatively cool. The heavy rainfall around 22 September, so beneficial for sweet wine producers, increased the threat of inconveniently mouldy red grapes in some of the less well managed vineyards.
All in all, if it was difficult to make a bad red wine in Bordeaux in 2000, it was extremely hard to make an exceptional one in 2001 – and quality varies much, much more throughout the region and even within the same village than in 2000. Only those producers willing to work at optimising vine health and yield, to vinify the grapes according to the character of the vintage rather than any fashionable recipe, and able to make the strictest of selections, can feel satisfied. If colour, tannins and flavour could be extracted reasonably rapidly and easily from the bumptiously ripe grapes picked in 2000, extraction had to be much more gentle in 2001.
Merlot grapes, naturally earlier-ripening, reached slightly higher sugar levels in 2001 than in 1999 and 1998, though notably lower than in 2000. On average however, Cabernet Sauvignon grapes were marked by much higher acidity than in any of the three previous vintages and very much lower sugar, and therefore natural alcohol levels, than in 2000. Nevertheless, there were producers in the Médoc, Chx Palmer and Mouton-Rothschild for example, who had clearly managed their vines so well, and delayed picking for some extra ripeness, that they avoided any excess of tartness. Cabernet in the smarter properties was not picked until well into October, much later than usual.
In the current competitive environment, where reputations are built on scores, proprietors are increasingly prepared to put only their very best lots of wine into the main bottling, the so-called grand vin. As Paul Pontallier of Ch Margaux remarked, it would have been unthinkable 20 years ago to select only 38 per cent of the crop, as they did, for the grand vin.
But the result is that the quality gap between grands vins and second wines tends to be even wider in 2001 than usual, the second wines generally providing a repository for all the less-than-ripe Cabernet.
The wines of St Julien are more consistent than most. Margaux is not as exciting as in 2000. Pauillacs are relatively successful and almost all red wine appellations are far less predictable than in 2000.
Several Pomerol producers however claim, like Denis Durantou of Eglise Clinet, that their 2001s, free from the drought characteristics that plagued 2000, are superior. St-Emilion and its increasingly important hinterland is, as I reported last week, divided into the hardened traditionalists, the new-wave modernists and those who combine the best of both schools. Dry whites are not as exciting as the 1999s.
Patrick Léon of Ch Mouton-Rothschild summed up the two last vintages thus: '2000s were vins de climat, the 2001s were vins de terroir'.
Here are some of my favourite wines from each appellation, but I cannot recommend that you rush to buy them at this early stage unless release prices fall way below current prices for 2000s to something closer to current 1999 and 1998 prices.
Favourite wines – likely bargains are listed in italics
Sauternes/Barsac
Chx Suduiraut, Rieussec, Coutet, Guiraud, Lafaurie-Peyraguey (I have not tasted Climens or Yquem.)
Dry whites
Pavillon Blanc de Château Margaux
Pessac-Léognan/Graves
Chx La Mission Haut Brion, Haut Brion, Ch La Tour Haut Brion, Villa Bel-Air
Haut-Médoc, etc
Chx Belgrave, Sénéjac
Margaux
Chx Rauzan Ségla, Margaux, Palmer, Ch Brane Cantenac
St Julien
Chx Ducru-Beaucaillou, Léoville Las Cases, Léoville Barton, Gruaud Larose, Ch Talbot
Pauillac
Chx Lafite, Latour, Mouton-Rothschild, Pichon Lalande, Ch Duhart Milon
St-Estèphe
Ch Lafon Rochet, Pagodes de Cos
St-Emilion
Chx Canon La Gaffelière, Tertre Roteboeuf, Clos St Martin, Côte de Baleau, Berliquet
Pomerol
Le Pin, Vieux Château Certan, Chx Lafleur, Pétrus, Eglise Clinet, Trotanoy, Hosanna, Clos l'Eglise
Lalande de Pomerol
Chx Haut Chaigneau, Les Cruzelles
Côtes de Castillon
Ch d'Aiguilhe
See the purple pages for detailed tasting notes on 300 wines.