Bordeaux 2013: ‘a joyous triumph over adversity’

This year’s wines from Pauillac and Pomerol are “a joyous triumph over adversity” writes AXA Millésimes managing director Christian Seely, who believes detractors of the vintage will be “agreeably surprised”.

In a lengthy post on his personal blog uploaded yesterday, Seely described his first tastings of the wines at flagship AXA Bordeaux properties Pichon-Baron and Petit-Village as “moments of intense relief”.

While he acknowledged the difficulties of the vintage, and recorded rot in the vineyards, particularly on the Merlot from the Médoc, he also noted that a “rigorous system of triage [sorting] has eliminated any trace of this”.

As a consequence, 2013 is a very low yielding vintage, but one which has produced reds….