Long term followers of this site will know that I have in the past
recommended the reports of Jean-Marc Quarin, an independent wine
commentator based in Bordeaux whose work is available at
www.quarin.com.
He is able to give us the sort of continuous eye witness reports which
those of us who visit Bordeaux only intermittently cannot hope to match -
and is also an assiduous taster.
One of many supportive correspondents on
l'affaire Pavie (RIP soon,
I hope) drew my attention to the following extremely interesting extract
from his most recent report, on St-Emilion:
To come back to Jancis Robinson’s comment, I would just like to share with you something I
observed around mid-September. That day, I was tasting the grapes in the vineyards of Pavie.
They were shrivelled and had lost the taste which constitutes the very life of the fruit. I was
thinking in myself that Pavie should have harvested earlier. At that moment, a tractor drove
past me, busy spraying the grapes with lime. The purpose of this measure was probably to
prevent the grapes from rotting and to promote their dehydration even more. Considering the
heat wave we had this summer, I felt totally confounded by the incongruous action I just
witnessed.
PAVIE 90
Tasted four times, of which two times were during blind tastings. Each time, I found it had a
lot of colour and a moderately intense nose with notes of ripe rather than fresh fruit and a
smell of liquor, not to say raspberry liquor. On the palate, this wine combines liveliness with
fat on a quite refined tactile sensation. I regret its lack of savoury taste in mid-palate. Had it
been harvested earlier, it would certainly not have been as heavy and it would have kept more
life and fruit. In the finish, it becomes very serious, with tannins and wood of the best quality.
This wine is substantial rather than tasty and will please the wine lovers of the new world
(who should perhaps wonder why this is so) more than those with a palate for classical
Bordeaux wines, meaning a model Bordeaux wine. In other words, you must understand that a
classical Bordeaux wine is more authentic than a non classical one.
Vintage 2003 assessed at the same level as 2002.
Facebook
RSS
