Pichon Lalande vs Baron '14

Peter Creasey

Peter Creasey

Peter Creasey
Keith, I can't find where we were discussing the Pichon Lalande '14 and Baron '14.

In any event, I ended up buying the Lalande as it sounds better, especially having less Cabernet Sauvignon and more Merlot, etc. Reports on the Lalande seemed to be marginally better; plus, the Lalande was $7/bottle cheaper than the Baron.

In any case, thanks for the heads up on these 2014 bottlings.

. . . . Pete
 
Keith, good call! I've liked the Calon-Segur in numerous vintages...for some reason the '67 sticks out in my mind.

Having said the foregoing, though, for 2014 I believe I would prefer paying a few more dollars for the 2nd growths (that is, if I were an active buyer of Bordeaux, which I am not).

Until your bringing up the 2014s, I really hadn't paid much attention to how favorably they are rated, seemingly across the board.

. . . . Pete
 
Well, here are all the second growths:

Brane-Cantenac
Cos d'Estournel
Ducru-Beaucaillou
Durfort Vivens
Gruaud-Larose
Lascombes
Leoville-Barton
Leoville Las Cases
Leoville-Poyferre
Montrose
Pichon-Baron
Pichon-Lalande
Rauzan-Segla
Rauzan-Gassies

The Calon is better than many if not most of those. (So far I have had the Cos, Durfort, Barton, Poyferre, Montrose, Baron, Lalande, and Segla.)
St.-Estephe is a real sweet spot in this vintage too.
 
I just realized why the 2014s were under my radar. The Fete du Bordeaux for the 2014s is the only one I have ever missed here.

Of that list of second growths, I would expect to like the Brane-Cantenac, Ducru-Beaucaillou, Lascombes, Leoville-Barton, Pichon-Baron, and Pichon-Lalande.

Of the third growths, one I have consistently liked for the money is the Langoa-Barton. I personaly would expect it to be better, and be a better buy, than the Calon-Segur but I could easily be wrong.

. . . . . Pete
 
One more PSA! I had already moved on to the '15s, but when opportunity knocks... Wally's has the 2014 Ducru Beaucaillou on sale at $99; next best price on WS is $125, and this is another bottle that's as close as $99 can be to being a QPR. Not sure whether this or the PLL is my favorite of the vintage, though this one has more muscle and heft. Cannot compare it to recent Ducrus since I have been away from the region during the recent dark ages, but it's better than the 2000 and believable as a younger version of the great '95. The '14s are an opportunity that anyone who has any use whatsoever for Bordeaux really should not let slide. $99 for this bottle is cheaper than the 2000 cost me on futures, when adjusted for inflation. The '15 is $180+ and may or may not be as good. If you don't have any use for these wines, that's OK, I get it, but if you do, grab these while you can, who knows when the next window of sanity will come.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
One more PSA! I had already moved on to the '15s, but when opportunity knocks... Wally's has the 2014 Ducru Beaucaillou on sale at $99; next best price on WS is $125, and this is another bottle that's as close as $99 can be to being a QPR. Not sure whether this or the PLL is my favorite of the vintage, though this one has more muscle and heft. Cannot compare it to recent Ducrus since I have been away from the region during the recent dark ages, but it's better than the 2000 and believable as a younger version of the great '95. The '14s are an opportunity that anyone who has any use whatsoever for Bordeaux really should not let slide. $99 for this bottle is cheaper than the 2000 cost me on futures, when adjusted for inflation. The '15 is $180+ and may or may not be as good. If you don't have any use for these wines, that's OK, I get it, but if you do, grab these while you can, who knows when the next window of sanity will come.
Click to expand...

Are you able to correlate these wines with the earliest Bordeaux you tasted on release (or from cask) and then followed? I am having a hard time with that. And I don't have this issue in other places - Burgundy, Rioja, Rhone, Piedmont, Beaujolais, Loire - where the evolution in style, often climate-related, is more gradual and where a "projection" of the wines onto their predecessors is a manageable exercise.

factors to consider

(a) Unlike with the other regions listed, I took years off from tasting and following young Bordeaux, and the discontinuity probably isn't helping

(b) from what I've heard, Bordeaux has been catching up on sustainable viticulture lately; that's all fine and dandy... except even more historical reference points out the window. I bet the practices behind some of the most non-interfered-with-tasting Bordeaux from the 70s and even 80s would make a hipster somm cringe in horror. Apples and oranges.

(c) it's been said the difference between the Bordeaux of the 80s and 70s/60s is just as great (if not greater). But having been exposed to 60s/70s/80s all at once, I may be lumping them into one historical group and confusing myself in the process while wasting everyone's time on a lovely Sunday here.
 
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
Are you able to correlate these wines with the earliest Bordeaux you tasted on release (or from cask) and then followed? I am having a hard time with that. And I don't have this issue in other places - Burgundy, Rioja, Rhone, Piedmont, Beaujolais, Loire - where the evolution in style, often climate-related, is more gradual and where a "projection" of the wines onto their predecessors is a manageable exercise.

factors to consider

(a) Unlike with the other regions listed, I took years off from tasting and following young Bordeaux, and the discontinuity probably isn't helping
Click to expand...
Yeah, many of us did.... But I think the time period in which we took this time off was an aberrational period. From what I have tasted over that period, I don't feel like we missed much important.

The new Bordeaux vintage on the market when I was getting into this stuff was 1994 and then I really jumped into the deep end with the 1995s and 1996s. Those naturally became my model for what Bordeaux should taste like. There are still some being made that give me petite madeleine moments recalling those wines - 2015 Brane-Cantenac is an example - but even some of the ones that have a more modern polish deviate less from the classic model now than they did 5-10 years ago.

There are older folks who say that 1982 is when everything changed and the wines were never the same after that. But there is a bit of an epistemological roadblock here, since many of those people had to have been basing their own model for Bordeaux on the wines of the 1970s and/or the 1960s - which was itself an aberrational period due to all sorts of factors including vintage quality, industrialization of vineyard/winery practices, tough economics, etc. Thanks largely to the historical conservationists at Bern's Steakhouse I've been lucky enough to sample most of the noteworthy vintages of the last century+ (and some of the dogs too) and there's no problem drawing a connection from the best of those to the best of what's being done now.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
There are older folks who say that 1982 is when everything changed...
Click to expand...
I think vintages of the past were far more influenced by weather than today. A big ripe year, like 1982, overcame all the little hindrances of leaf roll and insect pressure and a dozen other minor impediments. Now, the vines are healthier, our viticultural care more proactive and effective, and that emphasizes handling in the cellar over the gifts of nature.

Which is why the taste, generally, of a region drifts more noticeably now: it is more reflective of cellar-work trends/fads, and those come and go much more quickly than vines planted 60 years ago.
 
I bought a bunch of 2014 Bordeaux this past week to cellar for my grand nephew. I picked up the ducru, PL and leoville barton from wally’ and climens, haut bailly and a mag of DDC from bassins.

Now we will return to our regularly scheduled programming (Burgundy that is).
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:

There are older folks who say that 1982 is when everything changed and the wines were never the same after that. But there is a bit of an epistemological roadblock here, since many of those people had to have been basing their own model for Bordeaux on the wines of the 1970s and/or the 1960s - which was itself an aberrational period due to all sorts of factors including vintage quality, industrialization of vineyard/winery practices, tough economics, etc. Thanks largely to the historical conservationists at Bern's Steakhouse I've been lucky enough to sample most of the noteworthy vintages of the last century+ (and some of the dogs too) and there's no problem drawing a connection from the best of those to the best of what's being done now.
Click to expand...

I'm far from the oldest person to post here, but I've been paying attention to Bordeaux since the '75 vintage first made a splash here. To me, the changes in Bordeaux followed on the heels of the Judgement of Paris, which put many producers on notice that improved cellar hygiene could produce fruitier wines with no overt flaws. The problems there were twofold: the financial problems brought on by the 1973 OPEC oil embargo and complacency and shoddy practices on the part of many lesser chateaux trading on the good name of the region (B&G anyone?). RMP in particular would like to point to 1982 as the year of change in Bordeaux, but to me changes were already well under way by then and 1982 just highlighted those changes after a string of mediocre years. While Bern's awesome collection will help showcase those earlier vintages, one of the changes I saw was the improvement in quality of Cru Bourgeois and Haut Medoc wines (disclaimer: this would only apply to those being imported to the US, natch), which is easy to overlook if you're only exposed to Grand Cru Classé wines. Certainly, by the '80s I encountered far fewer "rustic" and dilute wines coming out of there.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
One more PSA! I had already moved on to the '15s, but when opportunity knocks... Wally's has the 2014 Ducru Beaucaillou on sale at $99; next best price on WS is $125, and this is another bottle that's as close as $99 can be to being a QPR. Not sure whether this or the PLL is my favorite of the vintage, though this one has more muscle and heft. Cannot compare it to recent Ducrus since I have been away from the region during the recent dark ages, but it's better than the 2000 and believable as a younger version of the great '95. The '14s are an opportunity that anyone who has any use whatsoever for Bordeaux really should not let slide. $99 for this bottle is cheaper than the 2000 cost me on futures, when adjusted for inflation. The '15 is $180+ and may or may not be as good. If you don't have any use for these wines, that's OK, I get it, but if you do, grab these while you can, who knows when the next window of sanity will come.
Click to expand...

Sadly, $139.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
There are older folks who say that 1982 is when everything changed...
Click to expand...
I think vintages of the past were far more influenced by weather than today.
Click to expand...

Yes, now we merely have climate to contend with.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top