© AFP/Jason Wilson/Smart Set Press

Bottles of Bordeaux hold little appeal for Generations X and Y, says Jason Wilson

In this abridged extract from "Planet of the Grapes: Alternative Reds," Jason Wilson suggests that by focusing on top-end wines, Bordeaux has made itself "almost entirely irrelevant" to younger age groups.

"Does any wine intimidate more than Bordeaux? Even among friends of mine who are serious wine drinkers, Bordeaux feels like the schoolyard bully that no one wants to stand up to.

'I am totally totally intimidated by Bordeaux wines,' sheepishly admitted one friend, a woman who feels totally at ease with wines as obscure as Spanish mencía or teroldego from northern Italy or vranec from the Republic of Macedonia. 'I walk past that shelf in the store and all the Bordeaux bottles look exactly the same. Same colors, same scripty fonts, same gold leaf, same illustration of the damn château. It’s always Château du Something Something. Château du Blah Blah Blah. Château du Frenchy French. How do I even know where to begin?'

When I recently raised the topic of Bordeaux with another friend, a beverage manager at a very fine restaurant, he got seriously angry. 'Ugh, why do I even care about Bordeaux?' he nearly shouted. 'Who is able to afford it? Why don’t they just sell it all to Chinese billionaires so they can mix it with Coca-Cola! I’ll stick with the wines I love from Italy and Spain and the Loire Valley and everywhere else.'

I feel their frustration. Every year, an insider wine press beats us over the head with the awesomeness of Bordeaux — the breathless reports on auction prices, the Talmud-like annual spring dispatches from Bordeaux en primeur barrel tastings, the crystal-ball predictions on futures (i.e. wine bought by rich people that hasn’t even been bottled yet). 2009 was especially full of hyperbole. Robert Parker, the world’s best-known and most influential wine critic: 'For some Médocs and Graves, 2009 may turn out to be the finest vintage I have tasted in 32 years of covering Bordeaux.' Yet I feel like I hear a declaration to this effect from one or two of the major wine critics at least every other year.

The Bordeaux backlash began to gain steam during all the hyperbolic critical attention for the 2009 vintage, and its record-setting prices. New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov wrote that “for a significant segment of the wine-drinking population in the United States, the raves heard around the world were not enough to elicit a response beyond, perhaps, a yawn.”

A few months later, the Wall Street Journal’s wine critic (and occasionally famous novelist) Jay McInerney bluntly asked, 'Does Bordeaux still matter?' McInerney recounted boos at a fine wine auction when an offering of Bordeaux was announced. 'For wine buffs with an indie sensibility,' he wrote, 'Bordeaux is the equivalent of the Hollywood blockbuster, more about money than about art.' As sort of a hedge, he added: 'Bordeaux bashing has become a new form of wine snobbery.'

Top sommeliers have weighed in, too. It is often noted that Terroir, Paul Greico’s trend-setting New York wine bar with more than 50 wines by the glass, does not offer even one Bordeaux. But perhaps the most damning rebuke of Bordeaux came from Pontus Elofsson, the sommelier at the cutting-edge Copenhagen restaurant Noma, considered 'the best restaurant in the world' three years running. Elofsson steadfastly refuses to carry Bordeaux on Noma’s wine list.

© Wikimedia/Benjamin Zingg/Domaine Clarence Dillon

At La Mission Haut-Brion, Wilson was "utterly intimidated" by Prince Robert of Luxembourg

So it was with all this drama as backdrop that I made my first visit to Bordeaux in the spring of 2012.

My friend was right. Even for someone who writes about wine, Bordeaux is totally intimidating. It hit me when I found myself sitting uneasily in the tasting parlor of Château La Mission Haut-Brion in the company of Prince Robert de Luxembourg, the château’s royal managing director.

Prince Robert told me that the big-time critics such as Parker and James Suckling had visited the week before. During our chit-chat, I mentioned that it was my first trip to Bordeaux, and the Prince guffawed, incredulously. 'Never been to Bordeaux? And you write about wine?'

'Um, well…yeah?' I said, backpedaling. 'I guess I’ve just spent most of my time in places like Italy and Spain and Portugal. And other parts of France? I don’t know. Italy I guess is where most of my wine knowledge has come from.'

'Oh,' said the Prince, in a grand princely fashion, 'so you are an expert in Italian wines? Ha. Well, we have an Italian wine expert here!' I haven’t felt so foolish since middle school when I forgot to wear shorts to a basketball game, and pulled down my sweatpants to reveal my tighty-whities to the crowd. The message from Prince Robert seemed to be: How the hell did you get an appointment to taste wines with me?

I looked around at the regal tasting room, with the heavy wood furniture and the bust of someone famous, and the high-seated chairs where the important wine critics swirl and spit and opine and move cases of thousand-dollar wine. And I decided to jump right in with a question that may have been impolite: 'A lot of wine writers and sommeliers back in the States say that Bordeaux isn’t really relevant anymore. What do you say to those people?'

'The fact is,' said Prince Robert, 'that people need to write about something. And Bordeaux is obviously so relevant that they need to write something about Bordeaux. It’s the tall poppy syndrome.'

Prince Robert clearly had answered this question many times before. 'I would ask other winemakers around the world and they will tell you that Bordeaux would be the benchmark by which to judge all other wines,' he said. 'There are no wines in the world that receive more excitement.'

'But wait,' I said. 'Aren’t you worried that younger people aren’t drinking Bordeaux? That it’s not even on their radar? Aren’t you afraid that when this generation can finally afford your wines, they won’t care about them?'

'Yes, the young wine drinker likes the simplicity of New World wines. Wines that are easy to explain,' he said, and I’m not sure I can properly convey just how much contempt dripped from the Prince’s voice.

'Anyway, I am confident that people will come back to the great wines of Bordeaux.

'There has never been more demand for the top-end wines,' he added. This may be true, but we all know that the market is now being driven, in large part, by newer collectors in Asia. One might reasonably hypothesize that tastes will eventually change in China and India, too, just as they have in the United States in the decades since 1982 when Americans 'discovered' Bordeaux (via Robert Parker). Surely by now there is a Chinese Robert Parker? And in the not-so-distant future a backlash against Bordeaux by young, tattooed, hipster Chinese sommeliers will happen?

I didn’t get to ask these questions because, apparently, our conversation bored the Prince. He rose from his chair, bid me adieu, and wished me a good first trip to Bordeaux. 'Enjoy those Italian wines,' he said, with a smile and a wink.

© AFP/Château Pape Clément

Bernard Magrez demands perfect Parker scores at Château Pape Clément

Please don’t misunderstand. I loved my trip to Bordeaux, but it was also disquieting to see how much emphasis was placed on the top-end wines. It actually seemed a little disquieting to some of the younger winemakers I met.

At the 712-year-old Château Pape Clément, I met with a 27-year-old assistant winemaker named Arnaud Lasisz. 'In Bordeaux,' he told me, 'everyone always says we have to be the example. We cannot make middling wines.'

As we wandered the cellars, Lasisz told me, 'Our boss, he got a 95 for the red and he called a meeting and was furious. He said to us, 'Tell me what you need, and I will give you the money to do it.' He was furious. Even though he’d gotten 100 for the white that year!'

As we tasted the strange, intense 1988 vintage, full of cigar smoke and tar and leather and dried leaves, I asked Lasisz if he, as a 20-something, drinks a lot of Bordeaux wines when he’s out at night with his buddies. 'When I’m with friends who aren’t in the industry, they want something different,' he said. “Something fruity, something easy to drink.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Bordeaux since my trip last spring. Is Bordeaux really irrelevant? Will it really lose a generation of younger wine drinkers?

The sad thing is, there are a lot of truly affordable, truly good-value wines from Bordeaux that many people would enjoy. As a random example, here are three from 2009 that I would place in my own personal top-20 'best buys' of 2013: Château La Fleur de Jaugue from Saint-Emilion ($25); Château Reynon from Cadillac Côtes de Bordeaux ($19); Château Val de Roc Bordeaux Supérieur ($14). The Château Val de Roc was such a low-price revelation that I delved deeper and realized just how many Bordeaux I could find under $15.

The stuff under $10 (with a couple of notable exceptions) was mostly drinkable but forgettable. But if you stay in the $12-$15 range, more often than not you will find a good everyday bottle that punches above its weight. Mostly, I would look for wines from the Bordeaux Supérieur, Côtes de Bordeaux, or Côtes du Bourg appellations, though occasionally you will find a cheap bottle from Haut-Médoc or Saint-Emilion or perhaps a satellite of Pomerol like Lalande de Pomerol. If you’re frightened by French words, just look for those place names.

© Wikimedia/Michael Clarke | A vineyard in Blaye, part of the Côtes de Bordeaux, which is one area where drinkers can find value wines to drink now.



Below, I offer under-$25 selections that will show you that Bordeaux is still very much relevant. Any of these would be nice to drink by the glass at a bar or restaurant. Perhaps it’s not as sexy as trumpeting $400 selections. But if Bordeaux is ever to appeal to a new generation of wine drinkers — a few of whom will eventually make millions of dollars and will buy the top-end wines — we ought to start having more conversations about the bottom end."

Wilson's suggestions include (all from the 2009 vintage):

Château Cabredon, Côtes de Bordeaux (average price on Wine-Searcher ex-tax $11)

Château de Paillet-Quancard, Premieres Côtes de Bordeaux ($15)

Château de L'Estang, Côtes de Castillon ($20)

Château Rocher-Figeac, Saint-Emilion ($18)

Château Foseche, Haut-Médoc ($16)

* "Planet of the Grapes: Alternative Reds," by Jason Wilson, is published as an e-book by Smart Set Press at $2.99. It is the first in a series of digital wine guides.