Nectar de la Grave, Bourg 2019

The best growers in the less-fashionable regions of the satellite appellations Blaye, Bourg, and the old Premières Côtes have to work that bit harder to get their wines known and the quality is often exceedingly high while the prices remain sensible.

Blaye is the northernmost of these satellites, named after the town of Blaye (pronounced ‘Bly’), which sits on the varied soils of the right-hand shore of the great Gironde estuary. Merlot dominates and the majority of the wines are soft and easy-drinking, balanced and flavourful, but without the dominance of new oak. The wines are usually ready to drink much sooner than those of neighbouring Bourg.

Côtes de Bourg is a smaller region south of Blaye, where the Dordogne joins the Garonne to become the Gironde. The soils here are more homogenously clay with limestone and the wines, though still generally merlot dominated, are more robust with delectable tannins, and they benefit from a little more time in bottle as a result. They can develop extremely well with short to mid-term cellaring.

Before the draining of the marshes of the Médoc in the 17th century it was these areas that provided a good deal of the wine exported to Britain.

Castillon adjoins Saint-Emilion to the east along the Dordogne and inland to the north. It is developing a good reputation for its wines and several prestigious producers from neighbouring appellations have invested a good deal to make wine here and too very good effect alongside a number of excellent locals such as Château de Pitray. Merlot again dominates on a mixture of soils from clay to sand and gravel, though cabernet sauvignon is also has a presence.

A wider umbrella appellation controlee called simply Côtes de Bordeaux identifies special terroirs, which includes Blaye and Castillon with one or two others on the banks of the two rivers Garonne and Dordogne. The vast majority of production is red, made mostly from merlot, and there are many excellent producers here, such as Denis Dubourdieu.

Unusual circumstances. Unusual solutions. Visits to Bordeaux at harvest time by our Bordeaux buyer Tim Sykes showed him the potential of 2019 clarets, which carefully organised tastings in spring 2020 bore out with some wonderful wines. What’s more, the extraordinary circumstances of lockdown in 2020 made some châteaux offer much reduced prices. Two compelling reasons for regarding the vintage well as a buyer and drinker.

The 2019 Bordeaux vintage is unquestionably very good indeed, and for châteaux with their vines in the best terroirs, potentially excellent. Weather conditions overall were hot and dry, but the remarkable characteristic of the vintage is that the wines (both reds and white) have maintained freshness, with lovely cool, lifted fruit character. And whilst alcohol levels are above average for the past few years there is little evidence of this in the glass, thanks to a seam of fresh acidity running through the wines. Balance is the key to a great wine and the 2019s are harmoniously balanced.

Tim Sykes made two trips to Bordeaux last year during the harvest, once towards the end of September to visit the right bank appellations of Saint-Emilion and Pomerol, and then again during the second week of October for the Médoc, Graves and Sauternes. Both visits revealed an abundance of small, healthy grapes arriving at the cellar doors.

In normal years Tim would make two subsequent week-long trips to Bordeaux in April to taste the new vintage, but as we all know 2020 was not a normal year. Having been forced to cancel his trips he, like Bordeaux buyers around the world, was unable to visit individual châteaux to taste barrel samples of the 2019 vintage in the normal way, so instead he was sent, and tasted, dozens of samples here in the UK. Whilst this is not the same as tasting ‘sur place’, it enabled him to form an opinion of the individual wines and develop a clear overall picture of the style and quality of the vintage.

The 2019 growing season was not straightforward, and vineyard managers needed to be vigilant, but those who kept on top of things were rewarded with a fine and sizeable crop. In the winery, low-temperature fermentations and gentle extractions were the keys to producing attractively balanced wines.