The Final A of the Grands Crus Classés de Bordeaux tasting for the 2008 vintage took place in April 2023 in Montpellier, the city where the sun never sets. Thank you Régine and Francis for your welcome and for a wonderful guided tour of Montpellier’s historic center.
For this tasting, the top four wines in Final B – Le Bon Pasteur, Domaine de Chevalier, La Mondotte and La Tour Carnet – were pitted against the usual “big eight” of Bordeaux’s Grand Cru Classés:
Ausone, Cheval Blanc, Haut-Brion, Lafite, Latour, Margaux, Mouton Rothschild and Petrus.
Here are the results for the top six :
For the first time in the club’s history, the podium is made up entirely of wines from the qualifying rounds. It’s a proof of the levelling upwards that is taking place in Bordeaux! As in all the world’s wine-growing regions, new winemaking techniques are narrowing the gap between the big estates and the smaller operations. And this is true even in a difficult Bordeaux vintage like 2008, when the start of the harvest, particularly for the Cabernet Sauvignon grape variety, was more often a matter of necessity than choice.
As in the final B, wines featuring the Merlot grape did extremely well. With a special mention for La Tour Carnet, which offers an incredible value for money. Haut-Brion, with all its power, falls short of the podium, and will certainly benefit from being aged longer in the cellar. It is followed by a surprising Château Lafite, which despite its high proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon, seduces with its astonishing roundness and harmony.
It should be noted that La Tour Carnet is in fact first ex aequo on points, but comes second due to the greater standard deviation of the tasters’ scores. The same goes for Petrus, which, after the 1998 vintage, once again made it into the top six of the Finale A.
Visit at the Domaine Aigues Belles, a rising star in the Pic Saint Loup appellation