Tasting Bordeaux 2007: a mixed year, with some great early drinkers and complex flavours

When I commented on how drinkable the 2007 Bordeaux were at a recent tasting in London, Giles Cooper of BI Fine Wine wine merchants told me: “Most remaining stocks have been bought over the past few years by restaurant owners and collectors in Asia. They have been going to markets where drinking vintages are at a premium, and it’s now getting harder to get hold of them, as so many have been opened.”

If so, that’s a shame – although Hong Kong residents may be best placed to round up the remaining bottles. I was surprised, to be totally honest, at how much I enjoyed these wines. Where most 10-years- on tastings are a snapshot into how a vintage is progressing, with the 2007 Bordeaux, the majority of them are now ready to go, and are in fact in a lovely window of juicy fruits and well-integrated tannins that won’t last forever, but are offering lots of pleasure today.

It’s not all good news. These were the best wines of the region – around 70 bottles of mainly classified Bordeaux across the left and right banks – so we shouldn’t expect this success to be replicated at every level. And even here, the wines were not uniformly successful. The winemaking differences between left and right bank were really at their height between 1995 and 2010, and I found a number of right bank wines were still clearly showing heavy use of new oak that even at 10 years old meant they missed the freshness and florality that made the best wines so pleasingly drinkable.

Others (from both banks) showed signs of underripe fruit that were even less likely to grow into themselves over the coming years. And then there were those wines that remained absolutely true to themselves, even though the vintage demanded some modifications – so if you like the monolithic style of Chateau Pavie that was in full effect at that time, then you will enjoy the 2007.

All of this makes the 2007 vintage – which had a good spring, a cold and wet summer, and a beautiful sunny autumn – a brilliant lesson in winemaking. This is always true for the more challenging years, and it’s one reason that I like them. Besides, iconic vintages have their downsides too: they need years of ageing before they are ready. The Bordeaux grapes of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot are full of colour and structure. It is what makes them so age-worthy and fascinating, but in the hot years, these same characteristics create wines where tannin and power will take precedence over fruit for at least a decade. Combine this with the fact that you have to pay the price upfront for the buzz of a great vintage, and you can see why for early- to medium-term drinking, the less celebrated years have their upsides.