BORDEAUX, France — If I thought the tannins were grippy at the Graves/Pessac-Leognan tasting on Tuesday, I was in for a rude awakening when I arrived at Chateau Poujeaux on Wednesday to go through the primeurs wines of Margaux, Listrac Medoc and Medoc.
The 2006 vintage I had been hearing about bared its fangs. One insider told me that some of the vineyards in these regions took a lot of rain, and many water-bloated grapes were harvested. To fix the problem of dilution, some Chateaux bled the fermentation tanks to create more concentration in the wines.
Some vignerons have more finesse than others with this technique. Those that don’t end up with overly extracted wines that pick up too much of the hard, drying tannins from the skins, stems and pips.
To be sure, there was a whole lot of clumsy winemaking going on following the Bordeaux harvest of ’06, resulting in a few clunkers. Overall, however, my tasting notes of the 28 wines presented at Poujeaux are upbeat.
Most of the wines tasted had good underlying fruit, albeit struggling to shine from behind the wall of tannin. Even the best of these will require patience, for they will need several years to shed the tough outer shell and show their best.
Two proven Chateaux — Lascombes and Kirwan — were downright impressive. Both were beautifully perfumed and exhibited layers of fruit despite the strength of the tannins. In each case, however, the tannins were refined, as opposed to the drying tannins that were apparent in a few of the other wines. I gave each wine a score of 94 points.
I experienced very few wines with “green” tannins — the unripe, bitter tannins that are often found in cool-climate wines. And only Chateau Desmirail earned a “vegetal” comment, which I suppose is the worst thing you can say about a Bordeaux.
Chateau Monbrison and Giscours (93 points each) were hard on the heels of my top two wines, and I also gave good marks to Cantenac Brown (92), Durfort Vivens (92), Clarke (91), Malescot Saint Exupery (91) and La Tour de By (90).
One of the tried and true inexpensive Bordeaux (in the U.S. market) that showed well was Greysac, but the hard tannins will likely disappoint fans of this wine for they are used to drinking their Greysac when it is young. Poujeaux, host of the “blind” tasting group (journalists are divided into five groups and can choose to taste blind or not), was on par with Greysac with a rating of 89 points.
Photo: Journalists tasting Margaux, Listrac-Medoc and Medoc wines at Chateau Poujeaux.
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