The Bordeaux backlash began to gain steam during all the hyperbolic critical attention for the 2009 vintage, and its record-setting prices. New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov wrote that “for a significant segment of the wine-drinking population in the United States, the raves heard around the world were not enough to elicit a response beyond, perhaps, a yawn.”
A few months later, the Wall Street Journal’s wine critic (and occasionally famous novelist) Jay McInerney bluntly asked: “Does Bordeaux still matter?” McInerney recounted boos at a fine wine auction when an offering of Bordeaux was announced. “For wine buffs with an indie sensibility,” he wrote, “Bordeaux is the equivalent of the Hollywood blockbuster, more about money than about art.” As sort of a hedge, he added: “Bordeaux bashing has become a new form of wine snobbery.”
A year later, the Journal’s other wine critic, Lettie Teague, wrote about how wine drinkers “shy away from Bordeaux, dismissing it as too expensive, too old-fashioned, too intimidating or simply too dull.”
Top sommeliers have weighed in, too. At Terroir, Paul Greico’s trend-setting New York wine bar, it is often noted that, despite over 50 wines by the glass, there is not one from Bordeaux. But perhaps the most damning rebuke of Bordeaux came last summer, from Pontus Elofsson, the sommelier at the cutting-edge Copenhagen restaurant Noma, voted “best restaurant in the world” three years running. Elofsson steadfastly refuses to carry Bordeaux on Noma’s wine list.
So it was with all this venom as backdrop that I made my first visit to Bordeaux last spring.
My friend was right. Even for someone who writes about wine, Bordeaux is totally intimidating. It hit me when I found myself sitting uneasily in the tasting parlor of Château La Mission Haut-Brion in the company of Prince Robert de Luxembourg, the chateau’s royal managing director.
Prince Robert told me that the big-time critics like Parker and James Suckling had visited here the week before. During our chit-chat, I mentioned this was my first trip to Bordeaux, and the Prince guffawed, incredulously. “Never been to Bordeaux? And you write about wine?”
“Um, well…yeah?” I said, backpedaling. “I guess I’ve just spent most of my time in places like Italy and Spain and Portugal. And other parts of France? I don’t know. Italy I guess is where most of my wine knowledge has come from.”
“Oh,” said the Prince, in a grand princely fashion, “so you are an expert in Italian wines? Ha. Well, we have an Italian wine expert here!” I haven’t felt so foolish since middle school when I forgot to wear shorts to a basketball game, and pulled down my sweatpants to reveal my tighty-whities to the crowd. The message from Prince Robert seemed to be: How the hell did you get an appointment to taste wines with me?
I looked around at the regal tasting room, with the heavy wood furniture and the bust of someone famous, and the high-seated chairs where the important wine critics swirl and spit and opine and move cases of thousand-dollar wine. And I decided to jump right in with a question that may have been impolite: “A lot of wine writers and sommeliers back in the States say that Bordeaux isn’t really relevant anymore. What do you say to those people?”
“The fact is,” said Prince Robert, “that people need to write about something. And Bordeaux is obviously so relevant that they need to write something about Bordeaux. It’s the tall poppy syndrome.”
Prince Robert clearly had answered this question many times before. “I would ask other winemakers around the world and they will tell you that Bordeaux would be the benchmark by which to judge all other wines,” he said. “There are no wines in the world that receive more excitement.”
“But wait,” I said. “Aren’t you worried that younger people aren’t drinking Bordeaux? That it’s not even on their radar? Aren’t you afraid that when this generation can finally afford your wines, they won’t care about them?”
“Yes, the young wine drinker likes the simplicity of New World wines. Wines that are easy to explain,” he said, and I’m not sure I can properly convey just how much contempt dripped from the Prince’s voice. “Anyway, I am confident that people will come back to the great wines of Bordeaux.”
“There has never been more demand for the top-end wines,” he added. This may be true, but we all know that the market is now being driven, in large part, by newer collectors in Asia. One might reasonably hypothesize that tastes will eventually change in China and India, too, just as they have in the United States in the decades since 1982 when Americans “discovered” Bordeaux (via Robert Parker). Surely by now there is a Chinese Robert Parker? And in the not-so-distant future a backlash against Bordeaux by young, tattooed, hipster Chinese sommeliers will happen?
I didn’t get to ask these questions because, apparently, our conversation bored the Prince. He rose from his chair, bid me adieu and wished me a good first trip to Bordeaux. “Enjoy those Italian wines,” he said, with a smile and a wink.
I was then left to taste nine wines from the 2011 vintage with the public relations person. How were the wines? Amazing. No doubt about it. The flagship first label wine was more complex and dense and rich than just about anything else I’ve ever tasted. But at what price? Château Haut-Brion 2009 has been listed at $1,000 a bottle. I tasted the only ounce of the 2011 that I will likely ever taste, one ounce more than most of my friends and readers will likely ever taste. Will my description inspire you to drink Bordeaux? I mean, one of my friends drove a Ferrari once and another once had sex with an underwear model, but neither of their descriptions has exactly led to me closer to the same experience.
by Jason Wilson, The Smart Set | Read more:
Photo: uncredited
