How to blind taste Bordeaux

It’s a bit like one of those bad dreams. There you are, with a line-up of glasses half full of red wine laid out in front of you. You know that you are going to be asked to identify the origins of those wines. No one will give you the slightest clue. And you’ve only got a few minutes per wine to do the job.

Nightmarish as this sounds, the scenario will be familiar to anyone who’s ever sat a blind-tasting wine exam. But let’s make the task a little bit easier, shall we? Let’s assume that you’re told that the wines all come from within the Bordeaux region.

Even then, trying to pin down the source of each of them is no easy task. Nevertheless, every glass of wine contains clues – the question is, what’s the best way of making these clues add up to a strong conclusion?

‘My approach is to think about typicity,’ explains Jeremy Cukierman MW, author and former director of France’s Kedge Wine School. ‘I worked hard on identifying benchmark characteristics for each of the different communes.’

Cukierman won the Madame Bollinger Award for excellence in tasting the year that he graduated (2017), and has clearly spent time honing not only his tasting skills, but also the theoretical framework within which he embeds the evidence he gathers from the glass.

Others have a more intuitive approach. ‘For me, wine is all about the emotion rather than the technicalities,’ says Claire Thevenot MS, founder and director of Vins-Clairs, a UK-based importer. ‘The best way to get to know each commune is to associate them with personalities.’

Narrow it down

I believe that the route to determining origin in Bordeaux always begins with a quality assessment. The simplest wines come from the generic Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur appellations. They’re seldom the skinny, aggressive wines that used to be the norm, but despite the riper fruit and more rounded tannins, there’s always a lack of intensity and length that should make it clear you’re not dealing with anything more serious.

Mary Gorman-McAdams MW, a New York-based consultant and Bordeaux specialist, believes that assessment of quality has to be holistic. ‘It’s about the density of the wine and its shape. Does the wine fill your mouth, does it have a presence, does it have direction or does it just limp along?’ she asks.

Merlot/Cabernet

Your next step should be to determine whether your wine contains more Merlot or more Cabernet Sauvignon, as your conclusion will push you towards either a Right Bank or a Left Bank origin, respectively.

Serafin Alvarado MS, director of wine education for major US distributor Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, zeroes in on the character of the wines. ‘Wines that are mostly based on Cabernet have tannins that are more pronounced and grippy, while those of Merlot tend to be a bit more integrated,’ he points out.

‘Cabernet also has an elevated herbaceous character, while Merlot has less of that pyrazine character – it’s much more subtle, it’s not driving the style of the wine. Finally, Cabernet-based wines tend to have more freshness, more acidic lift, while those with more Merlot tend to be rounder.’

But beware. ‘You make things difficult for yourself if you depend on flavours and aromatics rather than structure,’ warns Cukierman. ‘It’s very easy to be mistaken, especially when you’re dealing with blends. Structure is really key here: there are higher levels of acidity in Cabernet, less roundness and more of a sensation of grip.’

Spectrum of quality

I’ve always thought of blind tasting exercises as being similar to taking a walk. As you travel along a path, you reach points at which you have to decide whether to turn right or head left. So, at this stage, having opted to turn right towards a Merlot destination, or left towards Cabernet, your next decision is another qualitative one.

If you’re on the Right Bank, lesser-quality wines will come from satellite appellations (think Côtes de Bourg or Blaye Côtes de Bordeaux, Lalande-de-Pomerol, etc) and better wines tend to be from Pomerol and St-Émilion. On the Left Bank, wines of the highest quality will be grands crus classés, and will therefore come from the communes of (north to south) St-Estèphe, Pauillac, St-Julien or Margaux.

The more southerly appellations of Graves and, in particular, Pessac-Léognan are also typically included alongside the more northerly classed growths, even though they weren’t part of the 1855 classification (with the exception of Pessac-Léognan first growth Château Haut-Brion). Wines of lesser quality on the Left Bank may be second wine bottlings (or even a third wine) from cru classé properties, or cru bourgeois.

Another clue comes from oak use: since new oak is expensive, there is generally greater use of it made in the maturation of the high-end wines (although many properties have now stepped away from the lavish oak levels of yesteryear).

It should be noted, even within the broad brushstrokes of this general outline, that there will be exceptions to the rule. There is no doubt that there are wines in the AOP Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux that outclass some of the lesser offerings of St-Émilion, for instance, but in general terms this is a workable rule of thumb.

Blind tasting Bordeaux: Identifying vintages

As with identification of origin, determining vintages requires the taster to have a theoretical framework within which to work. But before you even start thinking about vintage, you need to narrow down your frame of reference.

‘You have to use lots of different clues to get you to the right kind of age bracket,’ points out Serafin Alvarado MS of US distributor Southern Glazer’s. ‘Is the wine primary [flavour] focused or has it got tertiary notes, and if so, how developed is it? Are the oak and the tannins both well integrated? What does the colour tell you about [the wine’s] development?’

All of these leads can be used to point the taster towards an approximate age, although the range of vintages you need to consider gets broader as the wine gets older – and you have to bear in mind that good Bordeaux takes far longer to age than you probably think it does. (I recently opened a bottle of a pretty respectable cru classé from the 2010 vintage, and there was only a hint of garnet colour at the rim and the merest suggestion of earthy development on the palate.)

Once you’ve decided on roughly how old your wine is, your next step is to triage it. Is the wine from a cool, damp vintage like 2012 or 2013 (with less concentration and more of that underripe herbaceous character)? Is it from a very warm, dry vintage like 2018 or 2022 (higher alcohol, riper fruit, lower acidity)?

Or is it from a just-right, classic Goldilocks vintage, of the order of 2016 (everything sits neatly within the classic parameters you’d expect of Bordeaux)? Asking yourself these questions will help you narrow down the possible options.

And once you’ve got to this point, Thevenot counsels that: ‘You need to do some background work to understand the individual character of each vintage. People think blind tasting is about the act of tasting, but you really need to have done your theoretical homework to get to the right answer.’

Right Bank nuances

Masters of Wine and Master Sommeliers alike tend to have well-mapped routes through to the identification of wines from St-Émilion and Pomerol on the Right Bank, and the cru classé communes and Graves on the Left, but so-called lesser appellations are off the beaten path for most.

‘Pinpointing precise origin outside the top wines is difficult for both MS and MW,’ admits Alvarado (who is currently looking to add the MW qualification to his list of achievements).

Gorman-McAdams, however, has devoted much time and thought to analysing the wines of the satellite appellations on the Right Bank, as well as the Left Bank’s cru bourgeois communes. ‘On the Right Bank, it’s important to navigate between Bourg and Blaye on one hand, and Castillon and the Côte des Francs on the other,’ she explains.

‘In Bourg and Blaye, 10% of the plantings are Malbec, and this gives the wine a wild plum character and a spiciness that’s different to the classic Cab-Merlot blend. There’s also a sharpness to the tannins, a kind of wiriness, maybe because these wines come from a zone that’s closer to the estuary.’

Many of the owners in Castillon and Francs, Gorman-McAdams continues, come from St-Émilion. ‘So there’s often a sophistication to these wines, albeit with less density than you would typically find in St-Émilion.

‘These wines are accessible earlier, and there’s often something darker and blacker about the fruit. I think the other St-Émilion satellites are hard to identify categorically – they can look an awful lot like basic St-Émilion.’

Luckily, identifying St-Émilion and Pomerol is a comparative doddle for most practiced tasters. ‘Wines from St-Émilion are more likely to have some Cabernet Franc, and thanks to the limestone soils, you tend to see a little more tension and structure,’ Alvarado points out. ‘Pomerol has more density and weight to it, and slightly lusher fruit.’

Left Bank benchmarks

Once you’re on the Left Bank, Pauillac is the appellation around which all identification pivots for most tasters. ‘Pauillac is my Left Bank default,’ says Alvarado.

‘From there, everything is a plus or minus process. If the wines are more elegant and less tannic than these, I move towards St-Julien, or possibly Margaux or the Graves, appellations that are more about aromatic intensity rather than power. If you go north to St-Estèphe, though, it’s about the quality of the tannins – they tend to be sturdier.’

For Thevenot, though, the wines from each commune have a distinctive personality. ‘St-Estèphe is a country aristocrat, a member of the hunting, shooting and fishing set. St-Julien is charming and urbane, but it’s the Raymond Poulidor [a competitive cyclist who was nicknamed ‘The Eternal Second’ because he never won the Tour de France, despite finishing in second or third place numerous times] to Pauillac, which has everything it needs to be a winner – its wines are marathon runners.’

I like to bear in mind the fact that geography and typicity often go hand in hand. There’s a noticeable temperature gradient that runs up the side of the Gironde estuary, and conditions in St-Estèphe are distinctly cooler and fresher than those in the vineyards of Graves further south, below Bordeaux city.

As a result, St-Estèphe typically shows a firmness of structure, but lacks the accompanying plushness of the Pauillac commune just to its south.

St-Julien, Pauillac’s southerly neighbour, is understated and restrained – everything is in the right place, but there’s a lack of flashiness to the wines. The wines of Margaux, nearest of the four communes to the city, are typically the most delicate and perfumed, and may well have a higher proportion of Merlot in the blend than you would find elsewhere on the Left Bank. Meanwhile the wines of Graves are difficult to define, but often have a generosity and warmth that are lacking further north.

‘The Graves is complicated,’ agrees Thevenot. ‘It’s such a mixed bag. Although there are some great wines in the appellation, most of them lack the elegance or power of the best of the Médoc or the joyful playfulness of the Merlot-based wines of the Right Bank. I tend to think of the wines as lookalikes – they’re not quite the real deal, although they’re very close to it.’

Study reaps rewards

A lack of terroir typicity also plagues the wines of the other appellations of the Left Bank – unsurprisingly, given the vast area covered by the Médoc and the Haut-Médoc.

‘There isn’t a unified style that you can point to,’ confirms Gorman-McAdams. ‘It’s easier to pick out the northern Médoc, where it can be challenging to ripen the grapes, while wines that come from further south, near Margaux, can be more perfumed. In the past, wines from Moulis were a bit more rustic, but it’s a slightly old-fashioned take – winemaking is changing there.’

All experienced tasters agree, however, that although we often refer to blind tasting as an art, it’s actually more of an exercise in applied theory, albeit one that operates on generalisations rather than the specificity of individual wines.

Without at least a rudimentary understanding of how Bordeaux works in terms of geography, terroir and winemaking typicity, identification is always going to be a bit of a nightmare.

(NB: to help your Bordeaux studies, an ever-useful resource for reliable background information, listings, maps and more is the regional authority CIVB’s own website bordeaux.com)

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