Bad-News Bordeaux

It’s been a long time since Bordeaux producers had to deal with wines so rotten they were talking seriously about dumping them into the Seine . . . if they ever get as far as Paris. This year that kind of talk is back.

Reports of the “disaster” of 1991 tell of a Bordeaux vintage cursed by rain and rot and uneven ripening. James Suckling, reporting from Bordeaux in the Wine Spectator, says the general quality of the wines is poor--lower even than the dull 1987s. The top producers (houses such as Margaux, Latour, Mouton) usually manage not to sell flat-out rotgut, but for Bordeaux as a whole, ’91 is clearly a struggle.

The fact that the preceding decade saw a string of great vintages can be said to have made things worse. The excellent 1990 Bordeaux were more expensive when released this year than the already pricy 1988s (a good vintage) and 1989s (excellent)--both of which are, of course, more ready to drink than 1990. Such exalted prices have caused many U.S. buyers to reduce plans to buy, and that will go double for the 1991s.

One possible harbinger of things to come has been the lukewarm response to futures offerings of the 1990 vintage. There are rumors of an oversupply in some cities.

“Buyers were not as spirited on the ‘90s as they were on the 1989s,” says Larry Seibel of the Wine House in Los Angeles. “They (1990s) are being approached more cautiously than the ‘89s.”

Cautious, indeed. A decade ago, many Bordeaux buyers simply called around town to check prices, but these days most collectors are also looking at prices posted in San Francisco, New York and Washington, and they are getting auction catalogues and comparing prices.

“I think some buyers are seeing the glut of ‘89s sitting on shelves back East,” says Seibel. “I hear the D. C. market is really in bad shape because of overbuying of the 1988s and 1989s.”

Barry Herbst at the Wine Reserve in Glendale says demand for 1990 Bordeaux, despite the greatness of the wines, has been poor. He has sold perhaps 45 cases of 1990 Bordeaux thus far, compared with 400 cases of the 1989s.

Meanwhile, older vintages of Bordeaux continue to sell, both at retail and at auction, at lower prices than in the recent past. Much of this wine is coming from private collectors who are unloading wines they bought as investments.

Seibel says he has seen a lowering of prices for 1982 Bordeaux, wines such as 1982 Chateau Beychevelle, which he sells for $40, Branaire-Ducru ($40), Lagrange ($40) and Ferrand ($25). Auction prices for these and similar wines were higher three years ago. He says collectors are calling him almost daily with wine to sell at very fair prices.

In a book on French wine I read many years ago, the author said the top Bordeaux producers don’t release a wine when the vintage is very poor. That’s hogwash. Though Champagne and Port producers “declare” a vintage only when the wine really is good and don’t market their poor years by vintage, Bordeaux is one region where “vintage wine” is marketed every year, by every chateau, whatever the quality.

Even in such a poor vintage as 1963, wine was made. In his “Great Vintage Wine Book,” Michael Broadbent had this to say of the 1963 vintage: “Even the most gifted winemaker could not do much after a growing year that was inhibited by poor flowering conditions and a cold, wet summer causing rot.” Today most 1963 Bordeaux smell and taste literally like garbage.

European wine writers usually evaluate wine out of the barrel to let their readers know which wines to buy en primeur , prior to their formal release in the so-called “futures offerings,” but there’s no point with the 1991s. “This year no one has bothered to make an en primeur offering,” says Anthony Rose, wine columnist of the Independent in London, “because there’s too much wine in the pipeline from the (excellent) 1989 and 1990 vintages.” Rose calls 1991 a “disastrous crop” and has declined to taste it out of the barrel.