Introductory Remarks

This issue is devoted to Bordeaux, particularly the 1982 vintage. Is 1982 really as good as it is cracked up to be? That question was explored through blind tastings using methods that were as objective as one could possibly develop. The answer that a group of some of the world’s most well-known tasters and experienced collectors came up with was quite unexpected. Another tasting in which 1990 was compared against 1982 is also reported. Finally, my notes on 2000 Bordeaux, another highly acclaimed vintage, that covered tastings over a three year period, first from the barrels and the rest after bottling are also given.
 

Bordeaux 1982

How good is Bordeaux 1982 ? : An analysis in depth.

1a. Introduction

At the age of 20, an age when most good Bordeaux begin to approach their plateau, the 1982 vintage needed to answer at least the following two questions.

How good is it? Is it really a great vintage that stands apart from other vintages like, for example, the 1961 in Bordeaux or is it one of many very good vintages that have come along in the last few decades?

Undoubtedly it is a highly acclaimed vintage. But its reputation is derived largely on the basis of tasting basically 20 or so chateaux. So the other question that needed an answer was: How are the other chateaux, at least an additional 30 or 40 of them that normally have good reputations? How have they done in 1982?

The only fair way to answer the first question is to subject the 1982, at least the 20 or so chateaux of high reputation, to a comparison with other vintages---a comparison that must be blind so no bias comes in to play. For this purpose I had already devised a method that I thought would be objective and scientific.

And to answer the second question it is essential to do a tasting--not necessarily blind-- of a large number of 1982s, not just the 20 or so chateaux one keeps tasting, and praising.

To carry out this ambitious program I organized a tasting in Los Angeles, over a three- day period, April 26, 27, 28, 2002.

In addition to my group of wine connoisseurs and collectors, I also invited a number of wine writers : Michel Bettane from France, Clive Coates, Jancis Robinson and Serena Sutcliffe from England, Anthony Dias Blue and Steven Tanzer from the U.S., and Fumiko Arisaka from Japan. Regrettably, some of the writers I had invited, particularly, Michael Broadbent, Robert Parker, Frank Prial and Steven Spurrier could not attend.

Each day was split into two sessions.

Session I ("blind tasting "). 
The first session covered the "vertical" tasting comparing--blind--the 1982 vintage from a few selected chateaux, chosen on the basis of their consistency and reputation, against other great vintage--the “challenger” vintages--of the same chateaux.

Each flight had wines from the same chateau, a 1982 and two or three “challenger” vintages. All were served blind.

The "challenger" vintages were not necessarily the same in each flight. For example, in the flight for Chateau A, besides 1982, I would have 1959 and 1990 if those were particularly exceptional vintages for the chateau. On the other hand, for Chateau B the vintages could be different, e.g.1986 and 1989. We had at least three vintages (including 1982) in each flight but in some cases, particularly the first growths, there were four.

This session was meant to answer the first question that was raised above: Is 1982 a vintage that stands apart from other vintages or just one of the very good vintages?.

The "challenger" vintages for each chateau were selected after careful research of my own tasting notes and the notes of other experts. None of the vintages were older than 1959. The idea here was not to try to "guess" which was a 1982 (or any other vintage) but to determine which wine was considered the best in each flight.

For young vintages pitted against old vintages we were asked to judge the "intrinsic" quality of the wine, which meant that even if the wine tasted very young we judge it on the basis of its "potential" for greatness.

Session II ("with meals" tasting).
About 30 minutes or so after the blind tasting was completed, the second session began, this time with food. This was the "horizontal" tasting of different chateaux, all from the same vintage;1982. It wasn’t blind. The chateaux from 1982 in Session I reappeared, in new bottles, plus there were a number of other 1982s---a total of 93 chateaux were served over the three-day period.

Below are the details only on Session I. This is the first part of the 1982 event. The second part will be reported at a later time.

Methodology of the Blind Tasting for Session I
The scheme I had devised to make the comparisons as objective as possible worked as follows. Each person was given a stack of cards--"ballots"--at the table, one ballot per flight. Each individual flight covered the same chateau, 3 or 4 vintages, served blind. No one knew which vintages were being served except everyone was told that one of the glasses had a 1982 though they didn't know in which glass.

See the example below for the case of 3 vintages. All everyone was asked to do was to put a check mark against the number of the glass that received their highest vote. No comments or numerical scores were allowed on the ballot, just a check mark (they received a separate book to enter their personal tasting notes).

Each flight lasted for about 10 minutes. The ballots were collected after each flight and, immediately after that, the vintages for that flight were revealed and people were told which vintage was served in which glass.

The ballots for the flight were then counted and tabulated, as the next flight was in progress (The votes of the "journalists" were counted separately from the rest of the group of "collectors”). A breakdown of the total number of votes per glass (i.e. per vintage) was announced.

We then knew the vintage that received the largest number of votes (the "winner").

This whole process went through like clockwork interrupted by moments of drama and excitement whenever the results were announced.

1b. The Results

In Table I the percentage of times a 1982 was the top vote-getter is listed for each chateau—separately for the group of collectors, the journalists and the two combined. In all three cases 1982 was the winner on an average of only about 25 % of the time.

In Table II the preferences of the collectors, the journalists and the two combined are listed, in addition to the individual preferences of my own, and of Jancis Robinson (Financial Times, Jun 29/30-02), Stephen Tanzer (International Wine Cellar, Jul / Aug-02), Michel Bettane (Carnet de Dégustations, Jul-02), Clive Coates (The Vine, Oct-02), and Serena Sutcliffe (Quarterly Review of Wines, Autumn-02). There were also other articles on the 1982 tasting, but without the analysis of the preferences, by Anthony Dias Blue (Mercury News, Aug-02) and Fumiko Arisaka (Vinotheque, Sept 02)

In Table III the performance of 1982 is compared against each vintage that was selected for comparison for the different chateaux. The 1982 did decidedly better than only 1975,1983 and 1988 ; for the rest it either came close or decidedly worse than several younger as well as older vintages, particularly 1961.

1c. Conclusions

A few thoughts on what conclusions to draw from the results of the blind tasting.

The question we wanted to answer was;” Is 1982 one of the greatest vintages of the last century and, in particular, is it the best vintage since 1961 (not counting the vintage 2000)?”.

After comparing each of the top 25 chateaux of 1982 against the same chateaux from a selected number, either two or three, of other great vintages, we found that, on the average, 1982 scored better than the other vintages only about 25 % of the time.

The general consensus was that 1982 was one of the very good vintages, not necessarily better than several vintages we tasted, and certainly not THE greatest vintage.

Based on head to head comparison of 1982 vs.1961, we concluded that 1982 is NOT as good as 1961 even though only 13 of the 25 chateaux were involved in this match-up. This conclusion was reached primarily by noticing (i) how poorly 1982 performed against the 1961 for these 13 chateaux and that (ii) even though 1961 is older than 1982 by 21 years, it did better. The bottles of 1982 were in excellent condition and the wines, we found, were fully evolved and into their plateau. So the performance of 1982 was not adversely affected by the condition of the bottles or because wines had not opened up.

The methods used in the comparisons were fair and objective, as we all agreed.

Some people asked, however, if pitting the 1982 against all those great vintages selectively, was not like asking a team --a great team (e.g. 1982)--to compete against an All Star Team comprising of the best players (e.g. the other great vintages). How can you expect it to win most of the time even if it (let's call it Team X, the 1982) was THE greatest team on the basis of its championship record?

Rhetorically this argument sounds compelling, but there is a major flaw. The flaw lies in ignoring what one normally means by an All Star Team, which is supposed to mean a team that includes the best players in the league. The All Star Team must then include many of the best players from Team X as well. But in our contest of "Team X" (1982) vs. the "All Star Team" (the other top vintages) the "All Star Team" did not include any players from "Team X" at all, and so was much weaker. We should really call it a "Partial Star Team" (top vintages except 1982). Against that kind of a team our "Team X" (1982) SHOULD win most of the time if, indeed, it is the greatest team.

It’s like the case of Chicago Bulls of the great old days of basketball with Michael Jordan and other great players in his team. If they were pitted against an All Star Team that didn’t include Jordan and his top teammates, you certainly would have expected Chicago Bulls to win at least 50 % --certainly more than 25 %--of the time if you wanted to call them the best team in the league!

That sort of thing didn't happen for 1982.

What do we learn from all this?

First, it is easy to rhapsodize about a wine when you already know what that wine is. The real test comes when you put the bottle “in a brown bag”, put it against reputable challengers, also in brown bags, and see what happens.

That’s exactly what we did by gathering highly respected wine experts from around the world, and a number of experienced collectors, and let them go at it over three days to decide what they thought of the 1982 vintage.
The blind tasting was the key.

A large number of people came fully prepared to proclaim 1982 as the greatest vintage (some didn't even show up because they thought the conclusion was obvious). Instead, people who came left the tasting quite a bit chastened. Everyone felt, yes, the 1982 was awfully good but not that much better than many other vintages it was compared against.

The 1961 vintage turned out to be a clear winner. It did better than 1982, not because 1982 was still immature---even the best wines in 1982 have reached a plateau now--but because the 1961 just tasted so much better.

We had quite a varied audience, an interesting mix of journalists and consumers. But there was no major dissent from the basic conclusions.

It was interesting to discover that the wine writers, even though they, like the collectors, didn’t go for the 1982, generally preferred the younger vintages much more so than the collectors. That could be because the journalists are much more used to young vintages simply as a part of their professional life. Just imagine how much time—days and months, all year round--they spend on reporting the most current releases from around the world. After they’re finished with one year they start all over again with the following year with that year’s new releases. That creates a palate much more tuned to youth. Although almost every wine writer I spoke to vehemently disagreed with this explanation, I believe there is a grain of truth in it from just simple common sense!

In contrast, the collectors, through every day drinking and through tastings, tend to have a richer perspective of the vintages--from the young vintages, after they are just bottled, through the evolution of the same wines as they mature.

There was much discussion at the tasting whether 1990 Bordeaux may turn out to be the greatest vintage since 1961, better than 1982. To check that possibility I organized a separate tasting, one year later, of 1982 vs. 1990 for some of the top chateaux. Please see the article that follows. The overall conclusion was that the 1990s are no better than 1982, in fact they have evolved unusually rapidly. My scores actually favored the 1982. So, it didn’t look like 1990 would have done any better than 1982 against a vintage like 1961.

Finally, if we have learned anything from our exercise on the 1982 vintage, it is to always keep a healthy skepticism—a lesson that will come in handy as we sort through the recent 2000, and 2003, vintages. And, of course, whenever possible, it is important to subject these types of wines to severe—blind—comparisons, before accepting any hype.