Has Bordeaux become Boring

[Bacchus]

Since everyone seemed to appreciate the "thought" thread, do we want to consider something like this article by Alice Feiring. There's a couple of interesting responses by some small-scale Bdx producers on the classification system. (The text is small but it can be magnified by clicking on it)

http://www.alicefeiring.com/blog/2013/0 ... untry.html

And there appears to be this associated piece about some changes on the right bank:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=ca ... OzBY77OrzQ

[DavidG]

I find a lot of Feiring's writing, especially about natural wines, to be annoying, self-aggrandizing tripe, but that was a good article. I think the loss of interest in Bordeaux is NOT because Bordeaux is boring, but because:

1) prices are too high for the recognized names

2) it requires patience. The wines DO taste the same... for the first 10 years after release, at least to the non-Bordeaux geek. That lag time doesn't work for restaurants, which need to turn over inventory.

Now it may also be that the Bordeaux marketers aren't doing a good job of catering to the next generation of sommeliers, but I'm not sure that's as relevant as the above two points.

Prices have turned off the younger generation of wine enthusiasts, and as has been expressed in other current threads, they are losing or have already lost the next generation of drinkers and collectors.

Even if prices come down, there's still that need to let the wines mature in order for them to demonstrate their uniqueness. (This is true of the best Burgundies as well. I wonder if they are any better represented on restaurant lists than classed growth Bordeaux). Most restaurants just cant do that. They look outside Bordeaux for ready to drink wines that dont need years of cellaring. Or they could shift focus, as one of the quoted wine directors near the end of the piece said, to other appellations and producers in Bordeaux where the wine is made to show its character and to be drunk younger. Will the Bordelais promote those wines, or do the big boys control the marketing bureau?

Feiring is off the mark where she blames the loss of interest in Bordeaux on the slowness to adopt organic or biodynamic practices. A lot of Bordeaux properties are taking much better care of the vineyards and using less chemicals now than in the '70s and '80s, and the wines are better for it.

[Bacchus]

David, I too find her remarks on natural wine to be self-serving. I was particularly amused when, in the second article I link to, she writes: "As time goes on, I seem to want my wines more and more natural." Oh really!! She must be making a play for the understatement award of the year!

In my case, living as I do in a very small community out in the middle of the north atlantic, I have no access to any of the wines she touts, so have no real idea about her palate.

[AlexR]

The article is pretty superficial, like most articles that attempt to see the Big Picture.

Thing is, when you speak about a region as large as Bordeaux, you really need to qualify what you say! There are so many estates, so very many different ways of doing things...

Chemicals in the vineyards? Sure it's an issue. But c'mon - what makes anyone think that Bordeaux is worse in this respect than other regions?

I think Bordeaux is boring only to people who don't want to look, or don't know how to look to good wine.
The journalist who wrote the article will be soon forgotten. Bordeaux wine will not!

Alex R.

[pomilion]

Well said, David - I agree with all of your remarks, including Fiering being largely off-base in her organic/natural/biodynamic argument. It's also tiring, as well as inaccurate (or at least an over-generalization), to discuss bordeaux having lost its "soulfullness." I'm in my early fifties, live in Los Angeles, and go to a fair number of wine tastings each year. For the under-50 (and particularly under-35) crowd, bordeaux is old school and expensive, and they don't have the patience to age wines for 10+ years. And all of the bordeaux they've heard of is far too expensive. Burgundy, while also frightfully expensive, has a somewhat hipper image, and I run into more younger drinkers interested in it than bordeaux (mostly red -- the white premox problem is losing an entire generation of burgundy drinkers/collectors). Pricing and cellaring of bordeaux are the two biggest issues for younger drinkers/collectors. Forget about the first growths unless you've got a trust fund -- younger wine enthusiasts have heard of Pontet Canet, PLL, LLC, PB, Lynch Bages, Palmer, Ducru, Cos, Pape Clement, Haut Bailly, Smith Haut Lafite, Pavie, Angelus, etc. etc. but they can't afford those either. You have to be pretty obsessed (as we all are here) to figure out which currently under $100 bordeaux to build a cellar around. Or subscribe to Parker and just buy everything under a certain price point that he scores highly -- but that becomes a moving target because as soon as Parker scores a few vintages of a wine highly it escalates into the pricing stratosphere and becomes unaffordable. Most well-to-do younger collectors, in the States at least, have their sights set on $40-$100 bottles that are easy to understand, easy to buy, and don't have to be cellared for 10-20 years. I went to a fun tasting Wednesday night ("In Pursuit of Balance" -- CA chardonnay and pinot producers producing more balanced, somewhat lower alcohol wines -- the likes of Copain, Varner, Littorai, Arnot Robers, Peay, Mt. Eden among others), and when anyone younger than me asked what I mostly drank/collected and I mentioned bordeaux no one was even slightly interested. There was one guy who looked to be wealthy and in his mid-seventies who was keen on discussing bordeaux...

[stefan]

I am sipping on a very boring 2000 du Tertre right now. Boring lilacs, boring sweet fruit, boringly balanced, boring firm mid palate, boring cassis at the sides, and boring long finish that I cannot get out of my mouth. I have drunk thousands of similarly boring Bordeaux wines in my life. Oh, how I long for a fruit bomb from CA, which resemble nothing so much as cocaine mixed with coca-cola and leave my teeth nicely stained.

[AlexR]

Stefan,

Excellent riposte! .

Alex

[Bacchus]

Except, Stefan, Alice Feiring thinks most Bdx these days ARE fruit bombs, which is one of the reasons that for her they're boring. She wants terrior and is of the opinion that Bdx has essentially given up on such values in pursuit of big fruit flavours and lots of oak.

[AlohaArtakaHoundsong]

Not sure it's mentioned there and we did not discuss this in the various recent threads, but part of the problem, for those who think there is a problem, may be down to the corporatization of Bordeaux. I'm under the impression that quite a few of the great growths are owned by insurance companies, pension funds and the like. It seems to me this ownership is less interested in what the wine tastes like as long as it generates the maximum profit. (Obviously properties that are closely held/family owned are in it for profit as well, though I can imagine they might care a bit more about the style of the wine too.) It seems beyond question that more points means higher prices. If I were running one of these enterprises as a profit center for a large corporation my first order of business would be to bring in the consultants and ask for a plan to add a few Parker Points to future vintages. So you can see how style convergence might occur in these circumstances.

Perhaps Alex can give us some statistics on the Medoc classed growths regarding the ownership.

I also thought it interesting in that Food and Wine article (and now I see no reason ever to subscribe to that, not that I was inclined to) Parker's 1987 lament about "technically perfect" versus terroir-driven wines. I think he largely avoided answering the question of what's happened since but it seems to me the trend has been more in that direction, or at least all in one direction style-wise.

[Bacchus]

Maybe there's a method to Parker's madness. Give everyone 96-100 pts, no matter what, and everyone will be free to pursue their own style!

[Harry C.]

To be fair, the Bordeaux have lost a generation of Americans. Their interest is towards Asia, and at the UGC tasting I overheard more than a few discussing this. It is a business and they are following their model. I personally couldn't care less about whether a 20 something wants Bordeaux versus a Spanish 10$ bottle. My life is limited, and there is one less person competing for the wine I want. "More for me!"

[Harry C.]

Also, Alex. You have trumpeted the same song for 10+ years. It has not found deaf ears. But some of the blame HAS to be assigned to the Bordelais producing this wine. Where is the lesser bottle of Bordeaux in the local wine shop? Where is the advertising letting people know about the possibilities? This is a great potential for the oceans of lesser Bordeaux to get their foot in the door, but where are they? Yes, I can find a few, but many you review never see this side of the pond.

[marcs]

I find a lot of Feiring's writing, especially about natural wines, to be annoying, self-aggrandizing tripe, but that was a good article.

I'll agree with you that Feiring often writes annoying, self-aggrandizing tripe, but disagree with you that this article is any better. She's dismissive of the quality of Bordeaux in general because it doesn't fit her market branding of 'natural' wines. Not just the price, the quality. She apparently doesn't think Bordeaux classed growths are any good any more, and this seems based not on personal experience but purely on a bunch of stereotypical complaints about 'Parkerized' wines. The question of Bordeaux prices (too high) is quite separable from the question of Bordeaux quality, and as we all know, despite some more California-style Parkerized wines there is still an ocean of good Bordeaux out there. She shows no sign of being aware of this.

And even pricewise, there's a ton of good stuff in the $40-100 range, including such recent forum raves as the 2009 Giscours, Sociando Mallet from any year (including 80s and 90s), Lanessan, Grand Puy Lacoste, etc. etc. and on and on. You're committing wine critic malpractice when you dump on one of the world's greatest wine regions and encourage people to ignore it based on no evidence besides your lifestyle preferences.

[DavidG]

Marc, did we read the same article? She's said and written all those things, on that I agree, but that's not what I saw emphasized in the (first) linked article.

[AlexR]

Hound,

You wrote : ”Perhaps Alex can give us some statistics on the Medoc classed growths regarding the ownership.”
People in Bordeaux think that many of the great châteaux are owned by rich foreigners, but this is a false impression. They may own some of the most famous ones, but the percentage of the vineyards in foreign hands is tiny. By the same token, yes, a certain number of châteaux are owned by insurance groups (mostly) and other huge firms. But this is still very much the exception rather than the rule, even among the great growths, which are family-owned by a huge majority.

Harry,

Question is: if you could obtain a lot more money for your wine on a new market, wouldn’t you do so? It wasn’t so long ago that Europeans regretted America coming into fine French wine in a big way and driving the prices up…

Also Harry, you wrote “But some of the blame HAS to be assigned to the Bordelais producing this wine”.
Of course. I agree.
“Where is the lesser bottle of Bordeaux in the local wine shop?”
Here, however, I think the blame is partly in the camp of the wine trade that is defeatist about affordable Bordeaux, which they don’t know and don’t seek to know.
“Where is the advertising letting people know about the possibilities?”
Advertising is valid for major brands, but tough for estate wines. Is generic advertising effective? I have no idea!
“This is a great potential for the oceans of lesser Bordeaux to get their foot in the door, but where are they? Yes, I can find a few, but many you review never see this side of the pond”
Yes, indeed. The other European countries bring in oceans of Bordeaux, and the US tends to skim the cream.
I think the only answer is investing, maybe not so much in advertising as “shoe leather” i.e. frequent trips to the States, in-store tastings, public relations activities, etc. All very expensive but surely profit-making in the medium term. If I were 20 years younger…

Alex R.

[AlexR]

One other thing about this "boring" bit: I think there is a strong component of "fox and the grapes" here.

If the wines that are practically household names were not so expensive, people would continue to buy them and love them.
But now that they are priced beyond most people's pocketbooks, there is a natural tendency to badmouth them and say that other cheaper wines are "just as good"...

Alex R.

[JonoB]

As you all know... I like natural wines.

For two reasons:
1) Free SO2, i.e. not when it has reductive flavours, bring on my asthma, and so I tend to notice it very quickly and am very sensitive to it.
2) there is something endearing and charming about the wines, I feel them to be "fairly honest".

However, natural vs non-natural has become a diatribe of pitchforks akin to the early days of modern vs traditional Barolo.

The natural wine people will big up a natural wine simply because it is natural... whether it is good is another story altogether, but they stick to their guns, and this isn't to say that natural wines can't be "safe" or "generic tasting". Many of them are... there is no set definition of them. Many are simply bad wines.

The technical people (and this is mainly winemakers and their buddies, and I know a number of people like this, but they can never discuss things like this with me, because they know I'm more balanced and require my wine to taste good (to me) regardless of technique) spout blind diatribe about the problems, etc, and doing things that turn to vinegar, whilst failing to realise that perhaps they haven't discovered the best stuff, as there is plenty of rubbish out there. It is a bit like saying... "I don't like Champagne" having only ever tried Oudinot & bad batches of Moet... how can you make such a statement without having at least tried a Krug, let alone the swathes of growers, and nano-negocs (which brings us to a point about the issues of generalisation) in the article.

MY view is that if the wine tastes good, then it tastes good, and I don't care how it is made. Let us leave the ignorant comments to those who like to self-agrandise, and let the scientists decide whether bio-dynamics are good or bad. Having chatted with some winemakers the other day, copper-sulphate is a pretty nasty substance (but being natural is allowed in bio-d) and it doesn't stick to the grapes. Thus it needs to be added every time it rains. One producer I know had to spray their vines 17 times last growing season with this nasty stuff. So perhaps natural as in nothing may be better here, but it adds a lot of work in the vineyards, and it may lead to a complete loss of crop in disaster years. A tiny addition of some smart chemicals that are safer than copper sulphates, in a mix that is 99% water, and sticks to the grapes means that you only need to spray once! But that isn't bio-dynamics of organics etc.

A further problem is that people assume that bio-dynamics = natural. Well there are plenty of growers who use organics, or no certifications because they refuse to use any sprays even if allowed, and thus are natural. They work hard amongst the vines, and try to confuse the bugs... yields can however be damagingly low with this approach. This is a common problem from both sides of the fence. We had a SOAVE the other night, which was bio-dynamic, and most probably natural. A friend who is a winemaker and global winemaking consultant brought it, and you could see his face screw up when our RSA winemaking friend said its bio-d, must be natural. I said it might not be, but it tastes like it... why did his face screw up? Because this wine had completely annihilated his prejudices about bio-d and natural wines in one fell swoop. In fact, the wine was already four years old as well. The flipside is that some will never be converted, but at the end of the day...

Great wine is great wine however you make it, and sometimes faults can be good.

[DavidG]

With all the wine you taste as part of the job, Jono, and the supposed link between sulfites and your asthma, it's a wonder you can ever catch your breath!

[JonoB]

With all the wine you taste as part of the job, Jono, and the supposed link between sulfites and your asthma, it's a wonder you can ever catch your breath!

David,

It is a problem, but I can pretty much pick up the free SO2 on the nose, and then try and swirl it away. If it has reduced into the wine causing reduction then it isn't a problem.

Irritatingly, champagne with both SO2 and CO2 flying about I can't get rid of... hence, if you see me at a Champagne do, i'll probably be sitting down and not talking very much! Being one of my favourite drinks it really is a challenge, and perhaps one of the reasons, that I decant a lot of young Champagne, even things that aren't particularly special!

[DavidG]

Champagne would be tough to give up. My condolences...

[dstgolf]

Jono,

Condolences on the free SO2 issue. I don't have asthma but I sure appreciate the free SO2 concerns with uncomfortable flushing and nausea along with profound fatigue. My wife who has a bloodhound nose can pick up sulfites on a sniff!! Most Bordeaux don't seem to be an issue but the new world fruit bombs and a lot of Sauv Blanc/Champagne drive me nuts. It's not an infrequent eve that you'll see me face/ears flushed dreading that last sip!!

[JonoB]

There was a dog point tasting of all their wines, there was so much sulphur I could hardly breathe, but with the older bottlings, it had blown off and they were superb.

Strangely if I know to expect lots of sulphur (say young Prüm) it doesn't have the same affect. I'm no scientist but perhaps the brain is telling the body to produce endorphins to counteract any affect on my breathing?
I rarely have this issue with Burgundy EP and there can be a lot of reduction flying around at the best of times.

[Gerry M.]

I don't know if it has anything to do with Bordeaux being boring but as a side note the Boston Wine Expo is this weekend and there is not one single Bordeaux producer listed as attending. It's kinda sad really.

Disclaimer: I plan plan on going only because the tickets are free and there are going to be a few decent Rhone producers to sample

[Bacchus]

That's interesting, Gerry. There's a big wine tasting event going on here this weekend too. And like yourself, I'm attending. However, the event I'm going to is ALL Bordeaux and nothing but Bordeaux (unless like the BD you don't count the right side as Bdx!). It includes several hundred wines including a number of first from the 80s. There will be a number of reps over from France, including a whole slate of people from Ch. Brown. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to it.

[Michael Malinoski]

I promise I will find one Bordeaux for Gerry to drink on Sunday, even if I have to smuggle it in myself!

-Michael

[Gerry M.]

That's interesting, Gerry. There's a big wine tasting event going on here this weekend too. And like yourself, I'm attending. However, the event I'm going to is ALL Bordeaux and nothing but Bordeaux (unless like the BD you don't count the right side as Bdx!). It includes several hundred wines including a number of first from the 80s. There will be a number of reps over from France, including a whole slate of people from Ch. Brown. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to it.

I'm envious.

I think with the demise of Diageo & Estate in the distribution of Bordeaux in the US no one else had the financial muscle to step in and fill the void. That fact and changes in the overall economy has lead to the US representing a much less significant percentage of the market worldwide. This has also had an impact on the pricing domestically with smaller distributors left to pick up the pieces and without the clout or leverage for better pricing.

[DavidG]

There was a dog point tasting of all their wines, there was so much sulphur I could hardly breathe, but with the older bottlings, it had blown off and they were superb.

Strangely if I know to expect lots of sulphur (say young Prüm) it doesn't have the same affect. I'm no scientist but perhaps the brain is telling the body to produce endorphins to counteract any affect on my breathing?
I rarely have this issue with Burgundy EP and there can be a lot of reduction flying around at the best of times.

This suggests a psychophysiologic response unrelated to actual sulfite-triggered bronchospasm, at least some of the time. Kind of a reverse placebo effect. Not that it makes any difference in whether you can actually breathe or not...

[JonoB]

I guess so.
I had always wandered why I would have mild attacks with some wines, and then when I was doing some winemaking in Burgundy, I was told to smell some sulphur (used in winemaking, so not naturally occurring) as a safety precaution so we could clean up or keep people away when there was some spilt around the place) and it hit me hard... Strangely, it gave everyone the giggles as well, including those who don't have asthma.

At least that was when I picked it up as being a sulphur issue, and more free SO2 rather than reductive SO2 as I go to hot springs in Japan and don't have a problem...

[Musigny 151]

The Feiring article was interesting because she got one thing right- here in the US, Bordeaux is not exciting, but her reasoning is all wrong. You start with a bee buzzing around in your brain, whispering" make natural wines" and then everything becomes skewed to the buzz. So the idea that Bordeaux is boring because the wines aren't natural, is clearly ludicrous. If this were the case, then we would see it reflected in the sale of organic wines versus the rest. Lacking in character and Parkerized, I would give her that, only sales of Pavie and company are still pretty good.

Restaurants lost Bordeaux thirty years ago. Not because it is not hip but because any right thinking restaurant owner knows that buying young Bordeaux for consumption is a good way to go bankrupt. You buy 2010 Lynch for $150, you store it for 15 years, and you have to sell it for $1200 if you take a three time mark up on the overall cost of holding it. Makes no sense to me, and none to the restaurant owner.

And any article which talks about Bordeaux and restaurants not buying without mentioning the demise of Chateau and estates is clearly withholding some pretty crucial information. In the good old days, C&E used to hold wine for years and sometimes decades. Restaurants could buy wines at a decent price to resell. Now that C&E, has gone, they have lost a good reliable source of mature Bordeaux. So not surprisingly, Bordeaux is not on the radar of the average sommelier...

Recently we had a pair of prominent Bordeaux winemakers at our press lunch, and I asked the question, is Bordeaux losing its young consumers? Here in the US perhaps a little, although they have begun some interesting initiatives. But in Europe and of course the far East, Bordeaux is still as important to the young as to the more mature drinker.

[JonoB]

Musigny,

I think you have made some good points.
If there isn't a good source of anything mature, how can a restaurant buy it and cellar it.
It is different if the wine is incredibly rare, not too expensive and key to the list. There are some wines that we buy, but in tiny quantities such as rare Burgundies or Italians, but more because quantities are so low. By the time it gets onto the list through "seasonal changes", it is usually pretty good when paired with food. These in the modern age are rare. One thing though, is that if you have a good relationship with a supplier and you take a lot of stock, sometimes they will agree to store it for you and keep hold of stock, but 15 years+ would be far too much.