Home > Vintages and Regions > Bordeaux > Bordeaux 2003

Bordeaux 2003

The 2003 vintage was certainly one that hit the headlines. This was Europe's heatwave year, characterised by an oven-hot August and one of the earliest harvests on record. With such a warm vintage, it would be easy to imagine that fantastic wines would result, but the wise know that there is more to making great wine than hot weather. Such a vintage has the potential to create problems in the vineyard and winery, and the wines require careful assessment. The Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux tasting, held recently in London (and also in other European cities, with future meetings in Asia and North America scheduled) is an annual opportunity to taste the Bordeaux vintage of two years previous. This offers a great advantage over the en primeur tastings, as the wines on show are the finished product from bottle, not a well chosen and inevitably biased barrel sample representing a portion of the final blend, still potentially smothered in toasty oak. This tasting offers the best indication so far of the successes (and failures) of the vintage in question.

Vintage Review

Bordeaux 2003 started well, following on from a cool, wet winter which allowed water reserves in the soils to build up after a dry harvest in 2002, so much so that measurements of local water tables were normal at the beginning of the 2003 season. The first signs that this vintage might be out of the ordinary came in late March, when some warm, dry weather prompted vigorous growth and early budbreak, at least a week ahead of schedule. The lack of rain kept yields down, to the disappointment of the vignerons, who were hoping for a more prodigious yield than 2002. Such an early start also meant the vines were at risk from frost (another potential cause of reduced yield), and when temperatures fell just below freezing in April there was some damage reported, although fortunately it was quite limited. Less than ideal conditions in a cool, occasionally stormy May did not help flowering one bit, yet another factor in depressing the yield, which by now were inevitably reduced, and the hot summer that followed only exacerbated this. It was the sweltering summer months of June and July, followed by an August roasting, that really set the Bordeaux 2003 vintage apart. Temperatures in the latter month regularly exceeded 40ºC, an unprecedented event in the region. The heatwave, which saw three weeks where no rain touched the soils of Bordeaux, placed a significant hardship on the vines, and despite the presence of deep water many vines shut down photosynthesis in response to the stress. Such heat also has a direct effect on the berries, roasting and hardening the skins; the 1990 and 1986 vintages saw a similar burst of heat during the harvest, and at least one of those is still troubled by a very firm, tannic structure today. Acidity, a desirable characteristic that is depleted by such tumultuously hot weather, was another concern.

The first report of picking white grapes was heard on August 12th, at Chateau l'Hospital. Hot on their heels were many of the other Graves properties, picking their Sauvignon and Semillon during the subsequent weeks, aided by continuing fine weather peppered with some welcome showers which helped to keep the grapes fresh (as well as fostering continued ripening of the reds). The red harvest started with the earlier ripening Merlots in the first week of September. Some were picked in slightly suboptimal conditions, with estate managers apprehensive about potential September rain. Others may have been burnt and shrivelled by the hot August sun. Both are factors which may have had a deleterious effect on many Merlot-dominated wines. Braver folk waited, and permitted the grapes, particularly the later-ripening Cabernets which had tolerated the heatwave with much greater aplomb than the Merlots, to ripen fully in what turned out to be a fine, dry September which, like August, saw a sprinkling of showers which did the vines no harm whatsoever. Those who stuck with it brought in grapes in rude health, mostly in late September, with a reported potential alcohol of up to 12.3% in the Cabernets (it was 13.2% in the Merlots), sufficiently high to avoid the commonly practised Chaptalisation should you wish to avoid it, although I believe many estates still poured in the Tate & Lyle. With such a high ratio of solids to juice, short macerations and fermentations were the order of the day, to avert excessive extraction of tannin. Permission was granted to acidify - unheard of in Bordeaux - and yet this seemed not to be necessary, the acidity picking up as the wines progressed successfully through alcoholic and malolactic fermentations.

In summary, the most pressing concerns about 2003 were as follows:

• Reduced yields
  Less than the already low 2002; was likely to have an effect on prices.
• Low acidities
  Miraculously these seemed to climb during fermentation, an event for which I have not yet seen a convincing explanation.
• Roasted, thick-skinned berries
  This produced the possibility of similar roasted flavours and, most importantly, undesirable tannins. Much depended on how much leaf-thinning had been undertaken.
• The oenologists
  Would the Bordeaux oenologists have the ability to deal with the fruit of such an atypical vintage? Must reduction (by removing water) and Chaptalisation under such conditions, and the novelty of acidification, all give the winemaker plenty of opportunity to create a disaster.

Tasting the Wines

So two years on, how do the wines taste? Overall, I was struck by a number of characteristics which may be applied as sweeping, blanket statements, although each commune does deserve individual inspection; some were certainly more successful than others. This I will do over the remainder of the week.

First, the acidity. The red wines do not, on the whole, suffer from low acidity, although a number of flabby examples can be found. This reflects reports from winemakers of rising acidities during fermentation. The Sauternes also showed well, with a number having very good freshness alongside a rich weight of residual sugar and botrytis. But the dry white wines have clearly suffered...these are a sorry bunch indeed, lacking flavour and freshness, and should be avoided.

Secondly, the tannins are rather prominent in many wines, more so in St Julien than some other left bank communes, and sometimes they seem rather incongruous. This calls to mind 1986, a vintage which is still troubled by unresolved tannins well into its second decade, although I hasten to add I am not likening 2003 to 1986. This most recent vintage has a superbly ripe fruit, and it is a question of how the tannins and fruit will develop over the coming decade that will determine how much pleasure these wines will give, and also when they should be drunk. This development, in such a unique vintage, is difficult to predict; one reason why some critics suggest these wines are for short to mid-term drinking, whereas others propose drinking windows of three decades (simple palate difference is another obvious explanation for this discrepancy).

Thirdly, flavour. These wines do not, at this stage, offer typical mineral-blackcurrant flavours of Bordeaux. Those wines originating from the left bank frequently displayed super-ripe blackberry, plum and cherry characteristics, so this is not a vintage for those that enjoy typicité. Strangely, however, despite such a 'New World' flavour profile (which I suggest will make 2003 one of the easier vintages to pick out in blind vertical tastings of the future) very few of the wines showed the creamy, luscious texture one might associate with the ripe 'New World' style of wine. In contrast, on the right bank, a number of wines were rather more reticent in displaying aroma or flavour, and although less tannic more wines here failed to impress...although there were successes too. These findings may well reflect the reported difficulties with the Merlots. (25/10/05)