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Auberon Waugh
From bitter experience I tend to be extremely sceptical when a wine mer- chant tells me, four years after a poor vintage, that he has revised his opinion of it and decided that it is really rather good after all. On the other hand, modern methods of wine production ensure that there are few, if any, very bad vintages just good and very good ones. The truth is there do not seem to have been any catastrophic Bordeaux vintages in the past ten years, to compare with 1963, 1965, 1968 and, to a lesser extent, 1969. And with the growth of wine snobbery in America, the difference in price between acclaimed and unacclaimed vintages is now enormous, bearing no relation to the dif- ference in quality.
When one adds to this the pressure on wine merchants to push their wine out as young as possible at a time when fewer and fewer wine drinkers have either the storage space or the patience to lay anything down for more than a month or two, the argu- ment for exploring the lesser years becom- es unanswerable, since they are usually ready to drink earlier. This offer is for those who are not prepared to live in freezing mansions for the sake of the cellarage, or are not rich enough to buy mature wines from the great vintages at the ludicrous prices they command.
Pomerol, being the smoothest of the clarets and generally the least tannic, is also the best for early drinking. The 1980 vintage was generally rather short on tan- nin, in any case. I ruled out several chateaux of greater eventual promise than this Chateau des Moines (1) on grounds that tannin (or something even nastier — a sort of copper sulphate taste which I have found creeping into some of the most expensive 1983 Burgundies) made them unsuitable for immediate drinking. But this Chateau de Moines — a small and little- known chateau marketed by the Moueixs of Chateau Petrus — has a good, smooth Pomerol taste with no harsh edges, and is not too thin at the end, either, although perhaps a little short in the finish by the standards of more expensive wine. At £4.09 the bottle (only £3.68 if your com- bined order is for three cases or more) it strikes me as a good bargain. Nobody could possibly dislike it or deny that it is crying out to be drunk. The last vintage of this chateau I tried was the 1976, and although I have only the memory of it to go by, I feel this one may be better.
The Latour a Pomerol (2) lands us in an altogether more expensive area at £6.67 the bottle (£6.26 at the reduced rate). It is, of course, a famous Pomerol, owned by Moueix and generally rated as one of their best, after Petrus and Trotanoy. It has a huge nose, and is very smooth and deep, with little complexity. The tannin, although there, is not reprehensibly evi- dent. Obviously, it will improve, but it makes a rich and satisfying drink now. Hugh Johnson describes Latour a Pomerol as 'a top growth . . . for long maturing', but Hubrecht Duijker, who writes that 'of all the Pomerols, Latour is probably the one that comes closest to the colour and strength of Petrus', believes it can general- ly be drunk within three years of vintage. It seems to me to be something of a Burgundy-drinker's claret, making up for what it lacks in elegance, or finesse, or breeding, by the richness and depth of its immediate appeal.
The La Fleur-Petrus (3) is exactly the opposite. Although just across the road from Petrus, owned by the same people, tilled by the same hands and pressed by the same feet, La Fleur-Petrus is as different as chalk from cheese, or at any rate as gravel from clay. It is at the opposite end of the Merlot spectrum — an intensely elegant and quite harmonious wine with a lot of charm for the dedicated claret drinker, and a promise of great complexity, but with none of the concentration of its august neighbour. As a natural Burgundian, I found it thin and sharp at first tasting, before the food, but as the meal went on I was more and more impressed by its subtlety and distinction. The La Fleur' Petrus is easily the most interesting of the four wines on offer; any dedicated claret drinker who hated my delicious Chateau Musar from the Lebanon — and I have heard of one marriage which nearly broke up over it — will certainly adore the La Fleur-Petrus. But most Spectator punters, , suspect, share my own preference for fuller, richer, less elegant wines.
I throw in the last wine for those wh° have not been convinced by my advocacy for the 1980s. The Americans have been gulping down these 1979 Pomerols for the last 18 months. Le Bon Pasteur is a virtually unknown chateau — unlisted eve!) as an also-ran, by Johnson, Coates, Per percorn, Duijker, or Alexis Lichine, to name but a few, although I notice this wine, won a silver medal at the Paris Contours °f 1981. But it surely illustrates what I Was saying about vintage prices that a cony pletely unkown Pomerol of 1979 (bY tif means generally considered a first-class year, although Corney and Barrow dispute this, where Pomerol is concerned) casts exactly the same as a La Fleur-Petrus 1w" (by no means a bad year). La Fleur-Petras, is listed by Lichine as an 'exceptional growth' in his order which goes: Outstand- ing Growths (Petrus only) then Excepti°11- al Growths, Great Growths, Super° Growths and Good Growths. Poor old B°11 Pasteur is not even a growth. Which just goes to show how we should concentrate on wine and price rather that! on label, vintage and price. This is a gets interesting wine than the La Fleur-Petrtl but there is nothing nasty about it. It has a good strong Pomerol taste with no cool; plexity and no fancy trimmings. I do not think there is much more to come out o' it (unlike the La Fleur or the Latour) but what is there already is very nice. It is the only non-Moueix wine on offer, and 1„ label will impress no one. I would not Pale £7.51 a bottle for it or even £7.10 at r,„ cheaper rate, but it would be easy to pa is more for a much less good Pomerol of tritto year, and I do not think it would be easY find a better Pomerol cheaper.
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