Arden’s recent treasure-hunting uncovered some rare bottles of the great Bordeaux Third Growth Château Palmer’s 1947, 1949, and 1952.
The second (after 1945) of three great post-war vintages, 1947 was a scorching summer in Bordeaux wine country. The grapes were very ripe and packed with sugar so that the resulting wines were very rich, though controlling the fermentations during the heatwave was difficult. No temperature-controlled steel tanks in those days…
The third of the exceptional post-war wine vintages, 1949 had a dry start to the year, then a cold and wet period as the grapes flowered, but it was another very hot summer. As with 1947, the wines were very attractive when young and a lot were consumed relatively early in their life, which makes the survival of these five bottles all the more remarkable.
The 1952 summer was cooler and the wines don’t have the sun-drenched richness of 1947 and 1949, though they can be very good: I have fond memories of a bottle of 1952 Cheval Blanc tasted some years ago.
All these Palmer bottles have slip labels that state: “Shipped for your pleasure by J BELMAR (NÉGOCIANT) À BORDEAUX”.
Château-bottling was not compulsory for Bordeaux Crus Classés until 1972. The five First Growth estates were largely château-bottled from the 1950s but a humble Third Growth like Palmer would still have been sending most, if not all, of its wine to be bottled by merchants and négociants like Belmar.
Probably these wines were shipped in wooden casks from Palmer to Belmar’s cellars and then bottled, labelled and capsuled by hand. (Not many bottling or labelling machines around in the late 1940s-early 1950s…)
These lovely examples are an affordable way to enjoy some of Bordeaux’s finest-ever vintages.
More than 70 years later, they will again be shipped for your pleasure… 🍷
