I had heard about Vinexpo several years ago from wine industry friends that told me Vinexpo is the largest and most premier wine event in the world. It sounded great to me but the one caveat is that it’s for the trade only. Still I inquired, thinking maybe a wine blogger would be enough to get me in and sent an email off to some address in France. Although I didn’t really forget about Vinexpo, I did well to manage my own expectations about ever hearing back from anyone.

So imagine my surprise when in May, the following invitation lands in my in box: The President and Members of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux request the pleasure of your company at a tasting of the 2010 vintage organized during Vinexpo on June 20th and 21st 2011. I was surprised and of course excited but to top it off, the event was to take place in Bordeaux. My understanding is that Vinexpo takes place in Bordeaux in odd years with even years being distributed in other exotic locales such as Hong Kong or London. The perfect storm – Vinexpo, Grand Cru, in Bordeaux.

By the way, even though I had been invited, in order to receive my entry badge I had to prove to Vinexpo that I am in the trade and that process took a couple of days. Because the invitation was so close to the event (about three weeks out), I’m pretty sure they must have had some cancellations, which explains why the doors suddenly opened for me. It was risible to think I could even secure a hotel room on such short notice and my exhaustive search verified that not a single travel site had even one room available at any price. Being a glass-half-full kind of person, I booked my flight anyhow and set my sites on finding accommodations. Fortunately Vinexpo has its own army of travel agents coordinating this massive decent of wine trade people (50,000) upon its city and I was able to find a modest room for a not modest price, again due to cancellation. With so much to do in Bordeaux I knew I wouldn’t lounge around in my room much so I didn’t care. The Grands Crus de Bordeaux tasting was invitation only, limited to a relatively small number of people and I was not going to miss it if humanly possible.

Despite a truly grueling, hellish flight thanks to the remarkable incompetence of Delta and Air France, Vinexpo did not disappoint. The first event I went to was the tasting of the Grands Crus and I went into it wondering if the ’10 vintage was just more hype, especially after Bordeaux just coming off the 2009 vintage that is being touted as perhaps the ‘best ever’ by major wine critics. I tasted through about 130 wines at this event and I can say categorically that the 2010 Bordeaux vintage was not hyped at all, but it was indeed spectacular. I never imagined tasting Bordeaux this young that would be so balanced, with deep and delicious fruit, very fine tannins, yet retaining fine acidity. Such finesse and complexity is really unheard of for wine this age; many of these wines have not even been bottled yet so they were put into hand-labeled bottles from the barrel for this tasting.

There’s no doubt that that these wines will decline in a year or so and go ‘dumb’ for another perhaps three to five years but this initial tasting provided a glimpse of what will develop with bottle age. I think ’10 will be approachable for many Bordeaux at a younger age in a similar way that the ’05 vintage is. And I think this vintage will spark controversy for many years to come about which vintage is better, the ’09 or the ’10, similar to the current disagreement about ’89 or ’90, or the ’95 or ’96. It really doesn’t matter because both vintages are great although different.

In terms of fruit set and flowering, the ’09 vintage was very even across the board and the ’10 was very uneven which resulted in lower yields and uneven grape sizes within the same bunch, which of creates uneven ripeness. The ’09 grapes being very even made it easy to make excellent wine but the decisions about when to pick the grapes and the grape selection process from the ’10 vintage had to be undertaken with much more care to produce good results. There are a lot more technical details about the differences in the two vintages and not surprisingly, there are differences in structure, tannins, and acidity that are major contributing factors in how these wines will age. At the moment, the consensus is that the ‘09s will be more approachable at a younger age and the ‘10s will be generally more age worthy, which of course is what creates the great complexity that Bordeaux is so capable of producing.

During the tasting, I spoke with Oz Clarke a few times as we wandered from bottle to bottle throughout the tasting. I know that Oz is a famous British wine writer but I was not aware of the depth of his work until I wandered into ‘The Library’ at Vinexpo. This was a room set up with thousands of volumes written on wine and I could have stayed there for weeks and been very happy. Nearly one whole wall was filled with books written by Mr. Clarke, almost all of them on Bordeaux. Wow! To say this guy is intimately familiar with Bordeaux is an acute understatement. Anyhow, Oz expressed concern about the ’09 and ’10 vintages and told me he has grave concerns about winemakers moving in the direction of New World wines.

Of course with the huge, highly alcoholic, very extracted wines being served up at the tasting, his point was not lost on me. I do indeed hope that, despite the high heat that produces huge bodied very ripe wines, winemakers don’t forget about finesse and elegance, terroir and honesty in their wines. I believe in general that the Bordelais probably imposes the least amount of manipulation in their winemaking techniques compared to any other wine regions in the world, although Burgundy also is very non-intervention minded as well. Oz is a cool guy, really knows his subject, and I have a lot of respect for him so it’s difficult to not listen when he speaks.

With over 2400 wineries from 44 countries, needless to say that in the course of the event’s three full days, it’s like trying to see everything in Smithsonian in a week – impossible to even scratch the surface. I could have spent months there easily but I’m sure the next time I go, I will be more organized. 

I have much more to write about so stay tuned.

David Boyer