The region may be battling challenges on numerous fronts, but the 2023 Bordeaux vintage, while seldom scaling the heights of its immediate predecessor, nonetheless offers many very elegant, refined wines of great potential, with a decidedly fresh “contemporary classical” feel, says Simon Field MW.
The red carpet snakes through the vat room, past the dazzling stainless steel, and then into the barrel warehouse, expensive barriques lined up, and finally into the tasting room. Troplong Modot had transformed its en primeur tasting in April into the Oscars, a confident welcome for the 5,000 or so who had come to taste the young wines and, implicitly, to lend support to an apparently faltering mechanism. Smiles and laughter, a few tongues in cheeks, and the prospect of some excellent, if young, wines. The supply-side logic of the primeurs—which has been focused on demand exceeding supply and on subsequent asset appreciation—is being questioned. The red carpet symbolizes a gentle snub to all that—a statement of hubristic self-belief and a playful endorsement of a highly successful sales vehicle. But has it worked?
The widening diaspora between the quality of the product and the fragility of the mechanism comes into even sharper focus in a year that, though prized and classically structured, does not scale the heights of its forebear. The purpose of this report is primarily to focus on the vintage itself, but it would be unwise to ignore the commercial backdrop, albeit a backdrop that covers but a small, rarefied part of the
This Article was originally published on World of Fine Wine
