Bordeaux 2016 – St-Émilion and satellites

The good news re the sprawling and extremely varied appellation of St-Émilion is that winemaking has been calming down quite considerably since the excesses of the last decade of the last century and the early years of this. I saw far fewer wines with any suggestion of over-extraction, overripeness and too much oak than used to be the case. 

Mind you, overripeness was highly unusual in 2016. Temperatures were only slightly higher than average in St-Émilion during the growing season, and then cooler than usual in...