For me the wines of the Haut-Médoc performed much better than  I feared during primeurs 2013. Expecting the worst, I was generally encouraged and came away feeling that many had made the best of the poor hand the growing season had dealt them. There were casualties though. Château Malescasse and Château La Lagune will not release 2013s. Nevertheless Château Cantemerle [as ever], Château Belle-Vue and Château La Tour Carnet have produced good wines. Château Cissac, Château Belgrave, Château de Camensac and Château Larose-Trintaudon were also encouraging and should offer good value.

The Margaux appellation has struggled more than most in 2013. A great many wines tasted at the Union des Grand Crus tasting were in a kind of no-man’s land. The delicate fruit tones of 2013 had been worked too much in quite a few cases, rendering them chewy and extracted yet with puckering levels of acidity. Some very good wines have still been made. I’ve posted separately on Château Margaux and Château Palmer. Both stand out as beacons of hope but neither are what you might call affordable. Elegant efforts from Château Angludet, Château Giscours and Château du Tertre are pure and vigorous and worth considering if you’re a Margaux fan [like me]. Château Rauzan-Ségla and Château Brane-Cantenac, Château d’Issan and Château Lascombes, should also work out well too. The disappointments seem more to do with approaches to the vintage in the cellar as much as the problems that 2013 presented itself. In some respects many of the Margaux wounds are self-inflicted.

Château Margaux has succeeded in producing an elegant and perfumed wine in 2013. It is particularly interesting that this has been achieved without any Merlot at all. The final blend, 94% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot isn’t particularly ‘strict’, such would appear to be the genuine quality of the estate’s Cabernet [despite being picked nearly a week early]. The real casualty here is Pavillon Rouge. Only a small quantity has been produced in 2013 and much declassified into the third and fourth wines. Pavillon Blanc, the estate’s 100% Sauvignon Blanc, is zesty and attractive and underscores once again just how well the whites have done in this otherwise very tricky vintage.

Despite all the fashionable talk of terroir, it’s funny how, a bit like dogs and their owners, wines come to resemble their masters and mistresses. Château Palmer, which has had a fabulous run of recent vintages, has shown a degree of ambition and sophistication that clearly mirrors that of Thomas Duroux, the winemaking wunderkind now in his tenth year running this top Margaux estate. Duroux’s achievements have come at a price – namely the much higher cost of the grand vin itself – but surely Palmer has never been more consistent [or better?]. So has the estate managed to keep its footing in the testy 2013 vintage?