2018 Bordeaux - a perplexing vintage that just might be the best since '82 and '59?

Fascinating. What do you think when you know (1) the 2018 Bordeaux wines are high-alcohol, high-tannin, and low-acid, from a "hellish" vintage (meaning stark contrasts of too cold/wet and too hot); but (2) the critics say the wines don't taste that way at all, and are magnificent, perhaps on par with '82 and '59? I confess I can't make much sense of it unless #2 is pure marketing lies, which is very unlikely given the fine reputations of the critics. But this points up the complexities of appreciating fine wines. Wine chemistry is amazingly complicated.

This is an email to me from Philip Bohorfoush:

The 2018 Bordeaux en primeur has begun and the vintage is receiving tremendous accolades.  James Suckling calls the 2018 “an exceptional vintage” and Antonio Galloni comments “the best 2018s are positively stunning.”  2018 is a dark fruited vintage with intense, concentrated fruit, great freshness, and significant tannins.

James Suckling

• “Most people agree that it is a great year and can be compared in quality to recent excellent years such as 2016 and 2015. I think it could turn out to be an all-time great, similar to 2010, 2009 and 1989 or even such classics as 1982 or 1959.”

The finest wines are beginning to release.  I have included a table below with our top choices and their scores from James Suckling, The Wine Advocate, and Antonio Galloni. 

If you would like me to make sure you see the new releases first including first tranche pricing, please let me know.  Also, please feel free to reply with your wish list for ease. 

Many thanks!
Philip

James Suckling: 2018 Bordeaux – An exceptional vintage

• It is a unique vintage for Bordeaux not only because of its hellish grape growing season but because it created wonderful wines with a beautiful depth of ripe fruit and polished, strong tannins. These wines have an impressive underlying freshness despite one of the warmest and driest late summers and harvests on record.”
• The majority of the 2018 reds in my tastings were beautifully structured with ripe fruit and potent tannins, yet there is an impressive drinkability to them, which is a great sign of quality.
• I remember the first vintage I tasted from barrel as a young wine critic in Bordeaux – the legendary 1982 – and the wines were so good to taste from barrel that I drank some for lunch with the likes of Alexis Lichine, Hughes Lawton, Daniel Lawton, and Anthony Barton. In fact, I drank some 2018 L’Évangile with lunch last week!”

Antonio Galloni: 2018 Bordeaux – Back in Black

• “As for the wines, the best 2018s are positively stunning. I don’t see the consistency of 2016, for example, but 2018 offers a tremendous amount of choice for the consumer, from everyday gems to the rarest of collectibles.
• One of the most fascinating aspects of the 2018s is that, with a few exceptions, the wines do not taste at all like what the analyses look like on paper. The numbers show wines with high alcohol, off the chart tannin and, in most cases, low acidities. It may seem hard to believe, but the wines don’t taste like that all.
• The best 2018s are aromatically intense, deep, dark wines that beautifully marry fruit intensity with structure.
• The intense ripeness of 2018 notwithstanding, there is a very clear and conscious move to harvest earlier than in the past, which is resulting in wines of greater freshness. Extractions are generally gentler, while the impact of new oak has come down markedly in many wines. Terra cotta amphoras, casks and other fermentation/aging vessels that are not traditional in Bordeaux are present in an ever-growing number of cellars. I am seeing an increase in trials with whole clusters in fermentation, another technique that is not at all common here.

Saint-Estèphe

Saint-Estèphe is one of the unquestioned overachievers in 2018, the best and most consistent vintage here since 2014. So many wines are brilliant. Cos d’Estournel and Calon Ségur, in particular, are extraordinary. Montrose and Lafon-Rochet aren’t too far behind.

Pauillac

Pichon-Comtesse, Pontet-Canet and Latour are the most exciting wines in 2018, while Grand Puy Lacoste, Pichon Baron and Lynch Bages are just behind.

Saint-Julien

Saint-Julien is another star in 2018. Granted, the appellation is small, quality is often fairly homogenous. Nevertheless, I was deeply impressed with what I tasted. Léoville Las Cases and Ducru-Beaucaillou are off the charts

Margaux

Margaux is arguably the appellation on the Left Bank with the widest separation of quality and style of wines. Yields were especially impacted at properties that farm biodynamically. Rauzan-Ségla, Palmer and Durfort-Vivens all boast off the chart unctuousness and concentration, while wines like Giscours, Cantenac-Brown and Brane-Cantenac are more gently shaped by the growing season. Château Margaux turned out a brilliant performance across all three of their wines.

Pessac-Léognan

Pessac-Léognan is one of the most variable appellations in 2018. Among the reds, Les Carmes Haut-Brion, Domaine de Chevalier, Haut Bailly, Pape Clément, Malartic Lagravière and Haut Nouchet are among the highlights. Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion are less exciting than they usually are, while Smith Haut-Lafitte (Rouge) was not well put together on both occasions I saw it.

Pomerol

Pomerol is one of the real sweet spots in 2018. Petrus has never been so sensual, inviting and arrestingly beautiful from barrel. Lafleur is utterly magnificent, as are Trotanoy, La Fleur-Pétrus, La Conseillante and many others. Vieux Château Certan is deeply intriguing for many reasons, including the high percentage of Cabernet Franc relative to the recent past, but it remains a somewhat enigmatic wine at this stage.”

Saint-Émilion

Moreover, the stylistic shift under way to make wines with more freshness and energy than in the past is heavily centered around Saint-Émilion. Specifically, I am thinking about Troplong-Mondot, Canon and Beauséjour Bécot, Figeac, Millery and Le Prieuré are all wines that emphasize finesse over power. Experiments with large casks at Angélus are fascinating and yet another example of how much things are in a state of evolution in Bordeaux.  Cheval Blanc is another star…the 2018 Cheval is sensual, creamy and incredibly inviting.”

2009 Chateau Prieure-Lichine, Margaux

We opened this at the Columbia Gorge Hotel, a grand 1920s Italian-style gem right on the cliffs overlooking the Columbia River, with a 200'-drop waterfall just a few feet from the building!). Prieure-Lichine is a Fourth Growth from Bordeaux, and is considered probably better than that ranking, today.

So, the color was vivid purple, still young after nine years. The nose was good: Only faint cassis notes, but lots of coffee and some mushrooms there. On the palate, I thought the wine was delicate (as "feminine" Margaux should be), but for me it was too lean/austere, with not enough fruit or body. I am spoiled by the excellent (and cheaper--this Prieure-Lichine is $100 at retail today) Bordeaux-style wines out of Walla Walla. NO WAY does this wine deserve a $100 price tag or a 93 point score.

And, FYI-Don't eat dinner at Columbia Gorge Hotel. At least in January (very quiet season), the food is very average, though prices are reasonable and the staff is friendly. But they upgraded us to a top-floor corner room with a fireplace, for the same price--very nice! And the building is really a treat.

(photo credit: Google images)

A City of Wine - Why Not?

Sure would be fun to visit this place, opening near Bordeaux.

The architecture alone is fantastic.

And while you're at it, why not go to Ch. Lynch Bages' little village--the winery has added restaurants and shops, all as part of a little destination locale in Pauillac (Haut Medoc, north of Bordeaux). And why not go to Georges DuBoeuf's little destination locale in Gamay (between Burgundy and the Rhone), where he took over a train station and has a wonderful wine museum, to go along with the winery.

France has the right idea! OK, so does Carlton, Oregon ;)

Improving the Quality-Price Ratio (QPR)

QPR, in its simplest form, is a great concept but if you consider it even slightly, it quickly falls apart. It is clear that it's an inferior measure of wine value.

Consider an 85-point wine selling for $11 (whose QPR is 85/11 = 7.7) and an 91 point wine selling for $17 (QPR = 5.3). Does anybody really think that the $11 bottle is a 45% better value simply because it has a 45% higher QPR? Nope; in fact, the $17 bottle is likely the better value.

Clearly, something is wrong with QPR.

So I've been reading about different ideas regarding improving the QPR calculation. I borrowed one part of a solution offered by Robert Dwyer in this blog post: He notes that wine value increases exponentially as they rise through the 90-100 point range, and that makes a lot of sense to me, as the scores lie along a bell curve of distribution, so a 99 pointer is much, much rarer (and more valuable) than a 93 pointer (assuming that there is agreement on those two scores for two different wines).

I don't care for the proposed formula that Mr. Dwyer offers, but I borrowed one element from his article: I used the following factors as "weighting factors" to multiply by a wine's score:

90 points: 1.0 x (no effect on quality)
93 points: 2x
96 points: 4x
99 points: 8x

To take a couple of real-life examples: 2010 Chat Leoville Las Cases has average professional score of 98.3, so its QPR is: 98.3 x 7.3 weighting factor / $340 = 2.11.

A 2013 Lafite has average score of 93.5, so its QPR is 93.5 x 2.4 weighting factor / $480 = 0.47.

96-98 point 2013 Mouton at $360 (higher score and lower price) was hardly better, with a score of just 0.65. 

But 2013 Montrose (from a poor year, but it gets a great average score of 94 and the price is right at $90) gets the highest Bordeaux score in my 20-wine sample: 2.61. 

If you are choosing between the first two wines for investment purposes, the Leoville Las Cases (a Super Second Growth) looks like the far better choice. The Lafite might appreciate more, on a percentage basis, over time, but it has a higher starting price to overcome, so I expect its ROR to be less than the LLC, over time. We shall see.

I'm not sure if this revised method is close to accurate, but I think it's a huge improvement over regular QPR. I just used it to make a wine purchase.

What does this tell us? I think it suggests that First Growths on the market today are overpriced for the wine quality they bring. That's not shocking, but the corollary is a bit shocking: If you invest in the Super Second Growths (Pichon Lalande, Montrose, Leoville Las Cases, and a few others), you might do better over time than with the Firsts. Particularly in an off year where the prices are down but your target wine gets great scores. 

I think that, twenty years from now, people won't look at my 2013s and think, "oh, no! those are from a poor year." I think they will see the wine's age and its high scores, and buy those bottles. As I say, time will tell. Collecting Bordeaux is a Great Experiment. 

In a great year, the First Growths have CRAZY prices, and, via my revised QPR calculation, pretty lousy QPR, So I think my days of buying First Growths may be over. 

Life is all about finding, and exploiting, value. Let others overpay for wine; it is the easiest thing; any idiot can do it. Finding the best wines at the lowest cost--now there is a trick.


QPR

Bordeaux Futures - a bad deal?

This article asserts that a consumer who had bought Bordeaux futures in 2009, and sold them five years later, would have lost money. A lot of money.

While some are claiming that wine is a wasting asset and is always a bad investment, as always there are many complicating factors.

It's true that successfully investing in wine is very difficult. Here is a quick list of just some of the things that can go wrong if you try to make money by buying, holding, then someday selling fine wines:

1. You picked the wrong wines: either the market isn't interested in them later, or the wines didn't age well.
2. You chose the wrong vintage.
3. You stored the wines incorrectly.
4. The wines were stolen.
5. Your willpower is weak, and you drank the wines.
6. You couldn't find the right buyer or the right forum for resale.
7. You got divorced and your spouse took the wines.
8, Your friends or kids drank the wines.
9. You finally made money when you sold your wines, but you could have made more money if you had invested in something else.
10. The wines you bought were counterfeit.
11. The buyer you chose was a crook.
12. The wines were damaged when they were sent to you.
13. While in storage, some bottles were broken, or their labels were stained by other bottles that leaked.
14. You didn't hold the wines long enough.

However, if you choose the right wines (and First-Growth Bordeaux from a great year is always a good choice), and if you have superb storage and willpower, and can wait long enough, I still think that collectible wine is a worthwhile investment. Those bottles can improve for decades, and they become rarer over time as their brethren are consumed; this can provide a happy confluence of factors leading to higher prices for your wines.