“In this vintage of extremes, a producer undaunted by flirting with disaster and with a bit of luck on his/her side could well have sailed over the finish line to glory with all the flair and panache of Alain Prost”. – Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW
The Wine Advocate has just published Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW’s Bordeaux 2018 En Primeur report – “Extreme Vintage”.
As the name of the report suggests, Perrotti-Brown believes that 2018 was “a vintage that favoured the agile, those willing to go the extra mile and who have the hyper focus to cope with fast-paced developments”.
She says that “the styles of a lot of the 2018s are extreme”, as the wines have “big tannins”, “a lot of fruit, a lot of power and a lot of density”. She also outlines a few factors that have affected the style of the vintage: “extreme weather”, “extremely long harvest” and “extremely gentle winemaking”.
For Perrotti-Brown, “at the peak of quality […] terroir signatures marry with the character of this vintage to produce wines that speak of both place and time”. However, like many other critics, she affirms that “2018 is nowhere near as consistently great as 2016, 2010, 2009 or 2005”.
Perrotti-Brown is the second critic featuring in our ‘Benchmark Critic’ series (used to assess release prices for the 2018 vintage) to release their scores. James Suckling’s scores were published earlier this month and Antonio Galloni’s are expected next week.
Perrotti-Brown’s top-scoring wines can be found in the table below. In her tasting notes, she describes the recently released Angelus as “incredibly, finely, expertly, seamlessly knit” and praises the “rich, decadent” Ausone. She also comments on the “powerful” Latour – “absolutely stacked with taut, muscular cassis and savoury layers”, and calls Lafite 2018 a “benchmark”.
To read the full report on the Wine Advocate and access the complete tasting notes, click here.
Looking for the broader picture? Head to our critic scores page to see how Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW’s scores compare to other critics, including James Molesworth, Jeff Leve and Jane Anson.
[mc4wp_form id=”18204″]
