What are Bordeaux’s best values?

[felixp21]

my winners:

Red: Du Tertre. Honorable mentions to La Fleur de Bouard and Cantemerle

White: Carbonnieux. Honorable mention to La Louviere.

[dstgolf]

Just had the 2009 Lilian Ladouys last night. Still very young with firm gripping tannins surprising for this wine now 10 yrs on. The 2010 has been fabulous and much more ready to drink but still a ways from peak. The 2005 which we finished last year was stellar. Yes this is certainly a great value wine from St Estephe.

[Blanquito]

The 03 Lilian Ladouys was a great QPR that Houndsong sniffed out back in the old MSN days. It drank so well then that I Howed all of them in short order.

[AlohaArtakaHoundsong]

Especially in the strong vintages it seems to me that the average level of quality (whatever that means) is really high nowadays. I've had a few no-name Bordeaux Superior wines @ $10 and less from the 2014-2017 vintages which have been very strong (sorry) and I can't recall the last time I had one that was meh or below. And to me they taste like Bordeaux and just not some fluke freaks of climate change. The trick is finding those Bordeaux-y wines with pleasing and vintage-indifferent idiosyncrasies (Sociando Mallet being one example--although it is not hard to find). But as this thread shows there is no shortage of interesting wines at value price points. The base of my wine pyramid is loaded with the Chateau La Tour de Mons[es] of the region.

[dstgolf]

Patrick

Yes the 03 LL was great and we went through the case by 2015. An early drinker by comparison to the 09. I was surprised at how the tannins were softer and more developed in 2010 even with a lot of sediment in the 09 bottle. The only reason the case of 2010 got opened 1st was the 09 was buried and lost until I rearranged some cases in the cellar yesterday and decided to try a bottle. This part of the cellar is right on the floor and the coolest so likely has had some play in the delayed anticipated progress of the 09 by comparison at least to a degree.

[AKR]

I went through a case of the 03 L-L too, on the young side.

It was very nice

I think the critics declined to post notes on it - in a professional sense - but I never really detected a big difference between it and many other rated peers from that year.

I should think that 2016 will be quite good at Lillian Ladouys

[NoahR]

Here’s my issue with this whole question: there are lots of Bdx superieur and similar level wines, hundreds of them, that go between $10-35/btl but when you’re asking the question of what’s a great value, you’re not specifying whether you’re talking about a ready-to-go-on-release midweek daily drinker, vs an age worthy wine that punches above its weight but has a totally different profile, vs the emergent hipster natural wines that are a totally separate category but being championed by some of the newspaper critics.

I ha e serious trouble figuring out what the critics mean when they suggest wines are great value picks.

Thoughts?

[DavidG]

Interesting and valid distinction Noah. I no longer follow the critics so I’m not sure what they are currently saying or meaning.

I think of the midweek daily drinkers that go for $30 or less when someone says "Bordeaux's best values." Age-worthy wines that punch above their weight are good QPRs to me but that's not a "best value" to me if it’s a $50+ wine. There might be some overlap but I tend to drink those daily drinkers before they can show their age-worthiness.

Hipster natural wines have no value to me, so there’s that...

[AKR]

Here’s my issue with this whole question: there are lots of Bdx superieur and similar level wines, hundreds of them, that go between $10-35/btl but when you’re asking the question of what’s a great value, you’re not specifying whether you’re talking about a ready-to-go-on-release midweek daily drinker, vs an age worthy wine that punches above its weight but has a totally different profile, vs the emergent hipster natural wines that are a totally separate category but being championed by some of the newspaper critics.

I ha e serious trouble figuring out what the critics mean when they suggest wines are great value picks.

Thoughts?

Speaking of 'emergent hipster natural wines', try some of the new sour fizzy Spanish ciders. What a freaking scam. And they are being proffered up as authentic, regional etc. And although they are modestly priced, if you pour the bottle down the sink after half a flute, its a bad value too!