For me St Estèphe has produced some of the 2014 vintage’s most exciting wines. I’ve already written on Château Cos d’Estournel, Château Calon Ségur and Château Montrose who have jointly produced a set of 2014s can will probably hold their own alongside their remarkable 2010s. But this is not the end of the story. Very impressive wines have also been made at Château Capbern, Château Lafon-Rochet, Château Meyney, Château Ormes de Pez, Château Phélan Ségur, and Château Tronquoy-Lalande. Château Le Boscq, Château La Commanderie, Château Le Crock are all potentially excellent too. I’m a great fan of this appellation usually but 2014 is a wonderful vintage here. Given the reasonable pricing of so many of these wines, this vintage provides an excellent hunting ground for price-savvy Bordeaux enthusiasts. 

At last a vintage for the new management at Château Cos d’Estournel to sink their teeth into. If 2014 seriously favours the left bank, then it is in St Estèphe that some of the very best wines have been produced. Cos is right up there with these. It is an extremely polished and wonderfully proportioned grand vin in 2014. It is very impressive stuff and shows genuine freshness. Les Pagodes de Cos is also an extremely layered offering, displaying lots of delicious black cherry fruit. Cos blanc, made from vineyards up the coast close to the Médoc, seriously impressed in 2013, but 2014 trumps even this. It easily ranks alongside many of the great Pessac-Léognan whites this year.

St Estèphe enjoyed an excellent vintage in 2010. The vintage showed great promise early on and later at Vinexpo at an in-depth tasting of the appellation’s wines two years ago [see those notes here]. The MW Institute’s line up of five of the top properties of the appellation last November, albeit sans over-achiever Château Meyney, shows the wines to be living up to their potential. Almost all have much more to give with further bottle age. Château Montrose is full of power and weight, but also freshness. This is yet another Montrose with years of life ahead of it. Château Calon Ségur has produced beautiful Bordeaux that has the most wonderfully moreish texture. Château Cos d’Estournel was a little backward compared with the rest, and certainly compared to its own overt 2009, but there is greater freshness and typicity to Cos in 2010. Château Cos Labory has made another chewy, substantial wine. Qualitatively it rivals their fabulous 2009.

The MW Institute’s Annual Claret tasting of over one hundred top chateaux held last November was a good opportunity to assess how the 2010 Bordeaux vintage is developing. There is no doubt that this is a great vintage for many reds. It has been pretty consistent from cask to bottle, a vintage generally much more classical than the precocious and forward 2009, but of similarly prodigious quality. Taken together these two vintages make an exceptional back-to-back duo for Bordeaux, especially so on the Left Bank and in Pessac-Léognan. The same can also be said for Sauternes and Barsac. Pomerol and St Emilion once again have made many excellent wines in 2010, often extremely well endowed and big framed, though sometimes too much so in St Emilion when they nudge sixteen degrees.