Tasting Report: My 40 Top 2011 Bordeaux

It's been a week since I finished tasting about 600 samples of 2011 Bordeaux in France's premier wine region, and I am positive about the quality of the vintage. The year made some very good quality wines - even great ones.

I scored one wine, the Château La MIssion-Haut Brion, a perfect 100 points. I rated my surprise wine of the vintage - a Sauternes from Château Guiraud – 99 points.In this short report, I am posting my 40 Best 2011 Bordeaux including red, dry white and Sauternes. The 2011 vintage is a year that I will look forward to drinking in the future, and I recommend you buy some of the wines selectively, especially Sauternes and dry whites.

The 2011 vintage is a year that I will look forward to drinking in the future, and I recommend you buy some of the wines selectively, especially Sauternes and dry whites.  With exception of Lafleur and other small production wines, there is no rush to go out and buy the reds. I believe that 2011 prices will come down in the next two or three years as wine merchants cut their stocks to generate sales. The vintage was initially overpriced.

As I wrote in the past, the biggest problem with 2011, besides the prices, is that it came after 2010 and 2009 - the two legendary vintages that I believe are the best ever after 1961 and 1959. Few people took 2011 very seriously. Their minds and palates were still lingering with tastes and thoughts of 2010 and 2009.

The vintage was certainly more difficult than 2010 or 2009. A lack of water, nearly drought conditions, made it very hard to ripen the grapes properly. I remember winemakers telling me at the end of 2011 that it had been a mixed up growing season. The spring was like the summer with extremely hot weather and little precipitation. Summer was like autumn, relatively cool with some humidity, and autumn was like summer again. They had to be extremely selective in their vineyard during the harvest and only pick the best grapes to make wine. Further, winemakers had to be careful with their fermentations - softer and shorter macerations - as well as barrel maturation, or they extracted too many dry tannins and/or made austere and slightly aggressive wines.

The old saying of great terroir makes great wines in difficult vintages didn't seem to stand true in 2011. I found many wines from less respected appellations made excellent wines, even better than some of the big names. This was because vineyards in areas like Fronsac or Castillon Cotes de Bordeaux grow in soils that are less susceptible to the lack of water. Soils with more clay and chalk faired better in 2011 as they maintained more water during the growing season.

For reds, I am definitely a fan of the Right Bank over the Left Bank. The former made wines with tough and chewy tannins that will need many years to soften. The later, especially the area on the border of Pomerol and St. Emilion where the great names are located, made softer and fruiter reds.

Pessac-Leognan is clearly the best appellation, aside from Sauternes. No one seemed to be able to provide an exact explanation why the whites and reds turned out so well, but they did. Many suggested it was because they harvested so early. Some of the whites were picked in the early parts of August.

After tasting hundreds of wines from bottle, I agree with my original description of the reds. A large part of the 2011 reds have the same, or more, tannin content than 2010 and 2009. Most have close to the same acidity strength as 2010. But they don’t have the alcohol levels or the fruit. They don’t have the flesh or fat of the 2010. That makes the difference. They are lanky, or lean compared to the voluptuous and structured 2009 and 2010.

I originally made comparisons to 2001 or 2004, and I still think that 2011 resembles those years but only in Pessac-Leognan,  Right Bank or satellite appellations of the Right Bank such as Fronsac and Lalande-de-Pomerol. The Left Bank (Medoc) made tough wines that resemble a slightly less rich 1986 or 2007.

In any case, 2011 is a fascinating vintage. It's certainly not one of the best but there are many, many excellent wines. Again, below are my Top 40 wines from the vintage.