All tastings notes from the 2008 Bordeaux En Primeurs can be found in this section.
Of course everyone's scores are a little different, which makes comparisons difficult. I try not to give scores when I am tasting wines usually, rather concentrate on the descriptions of a wine's highlights and weak points - and I very strongly believe that scores should only ever be taken in consideration with the notes that accompany them, never on their own. But during en primeurs, it makes no sense not to score, when you are tasting such a vast number and effectively are judging which have done better and worse in a particular vintage. My scoring system is:
Below 75 - Usually there will be something faulty with the wine, or it is simply undrinkable.
75-80 - The equivalent to one star in Decanter. Means I have taken one for the team, and there is little need for you to go out and taste it yourself...
80 -84 - The equivalent to two stars. There are some good points to this wine, it is 'correct', but simply is not standing out in the tasting.
85- 89 - The equivalent to three stars. Good quality, no faults. Long term potential.
90 - 94 - Equivalent to four stars. Starting to get very serious in terms of quality and potential for improvement.
95-100 - Equivalent to five stars. A wine that shows enormous class, representing the best of its appellation, and above all enormously enjoyable.
To set the scene, an extract from Bill Blatch’s Preliminary Bordeaux 2008-vintage report:
Dec 2008 / Jan 2009
2008: yet another turnaround vintage
Nobody’s going to believe it, and I’m not making this up, but 2008 in Bordeaux is rather a good vintage.
Yet, meteorologically, 2008 looks to be the identical twin vintage of 2007: Each month’s temperatures and rainfall figures are about the same and show clearly that both vintages started with a mild winter, continued into a wet spring, had a mediocre dull and damp summer, and were then saved by a miraculous last-minute turnaround in the form of a glorious autumn. And, in addition, 2008 was the second La Nina year running, the second year running to reverse the recent warming trend……and the second year running of 13 Moons!
So how come the wines of 2007, whilst retaining the same late-harvest characteristics of relatively high acidity, had turned out so radically different from those of 2008, the former bright, fruit-driven, fine-styled and elegant, the latter darker, richer, more generous and more tannic? Even to the growers, the outcome came as something of a surprise. They were expecting 12°5 and suddenly it all came in at 14°; anthocyanin counts of 7-800 and they got over 1000; IPTs (tannin measure) of 50 and they ended up often over 90.
The answer seems to lie, despite the apparent similarities, in the vine’s radically different behaviour in 2008 to 2007. In 2007, it had got off to an early and rapid start, with a quick early budding, followed by an early, if erratic, flowering; and it was only then that it got slowed down by the dreary summer months, then achieving a flash last-minute ripening in those fine September days. 2008 was entirely different: From the beginning of the season right up to the end, the vine never did anything fast all year; it took its time over all the stages; it seemed lazy, didn’t want to bud, grow leaves, flower or do anything at speed.
Consequently, it had very slow cycles which, despite the strain put on it by the April frost, by the excess of water in May and by a mediocre summer, allowed it to perform more effective ripening transformations in its grapes all very gradually and very inconspicuously.
This was especially so in July, a month that was cool but in the end sunny and dry, which, just as in 2000, made the phenolic components of the grape synthesise early. As in 2000, without this month, the grapes would certainly never have been so well prepared for the final ripening and would not have concentrated so effectively under the dehydrating effect of the autumn’s dry northeasterly breezes.
Yet July’s virtues went virtually unnoticed, and amidst August’s and early
September’s atmosphere of doom and gloom, in the vineyards as well as at the investment banks, it was raining a little every day and there was a distinct possibility the crop was going to be lost. Unlike at the banks, things were in fact not that bad: the precipitation figures were finally not that high and nobody had noticed that the soil was in fact much drier than we had
thought. This was of immense importance since it meant that there would be no risk of rot, and therefore no need to pick in a hurry, everyone waiting for that final touch of concentration, some even right into November.
And finally, it was the small size of the crop that allowed all this ripening to happen so effectively. With a crop the size of 92 or 04, there would have been just too many bunches for them all to stay healthy. Growers had cursed the naturally low ”sortie“ at the start, later further reduced by frost damage, by the poor flowering, by mildew, by culling and green harvesting, and by the final dehydration effect. But it paid untold dividends on the quality of the harvest, and - who knows? - without it, there may never have been a harvest at all.