The nose is dominated by smoky notes. In the mouth the wood overpowers with disturbing tannins, that accompanies you till the end and leaves you with a dry feeling. With later sips some fruit come forward, but overall the wine is overshadowed by the oak.
To be fair, 2013 was a very difficult year in Bordeaux. In this vintage there were plenty of challenges right from the start. Rain and warm nights fostered an attack of rot just before harvest and forced the growers to pick before optimal ripeness.
Only estates with many pickers and scrupulous sorting could manage to do good wines, assuming that the winemaker worked exceptionally well with the vintage and allowed the fruit to shine through wherever possible. Anyone who tried to over-extract or cover up unripe fruit with too much oak suffered. According to my tasting notes above, this seems to have been the case with this wine from Château la Tour Carnet, a fourth growth owned by Bernard Magrez, who among others also own Château Pape Clément.
Despite it was clear from the beginning that 2013 would be a very mediocre vintage, the French being masters of marketing and very charming, I let myself be convinced into buying some bottles, when I visited for the annual En Primeur Barrel Tasting in April 2014. The storyline was that, despite the challenging weather conditions, thanks to a very strong selection of the single raisins (using optical sorting technology) and the currently available winemaking techniques it has been possible to obtain a very valid product.
The slight drop in prices also helped convince me that the vintage was worth a trying. But above all was the three days experience tasting the vintage that induced me to buy some.
I remember pretty clearly this wine because I was positively impressed by it when I tasted it En Primeur, influenced by the fact that it is produced under the supervision of the world renowned oenologist Michel Rolland.
My current experience let me guess that what I tasted back then was carefully prepared and dressed up for the occasion, which is not a secret for the samples that get presented during the En Primeur week. When delivered three years after the purchase, the wines may not be exactly from the same samples.
The fact that I was at a much earlier phase of my learning curve didn’t help me in making a better judgment. At the end I bought too many bottles and I’m currently regretting it. Especially after having drunk a couple of my cheapest purchases, like this one that I paid 26 CHF “en primeur”.
The 2013 wines I tasted so far are pretty thin, especially for Bordeaux. On the other side, I will need to wait a few more years and taste the more expensive wines to come to a more precise judgment.
Country: France
Region: Bordeaux
Grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot
Type: Red
Vintage: 2013
Producer: Château la Tour Carnet
Price range: Medium (15-30 US$)
Pascal’s Enjoyment Index: 2/5