Wine Words & Video Tape

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Bordeaux 2009: Absolutely Fabulous

Written by JW. Posted in Bordeaux

Just returned from a week-long trip to Bordeaux to taste the principal wines from the 2009 vintage and I have to admit that these wines are amongst the finest young reds I have ever tasted.  It is a truly extraordinary vintage in the Médoc, the best ‘Cabernet’ year in living memory. It is a vintage in which many of the classed growths are nudging nearly fourteen degrees in alcohol and yet somehow manage to display extraordinary levels of balance.  It also looks extremely good in Pessac-Léognan, is beautiful year in Pomerol and has produced the best sweet wine vintage for Sauternes and Barsac since 2001.

The only question mark from my tastings was in St Emilion where some of the wines felt to me too extracted, though they may yet settle down. I’ll be posting more detailed notes over the next few days but the key words here are freshness, harmony and intensity. To say this is perhaps the finest vintage Bordeaux has ever produced is not to undermine the tremendous quality of the 2005 vintage but rather to emphasize just how extraordinary the wines are in 2009, a vintage which has raised the bar even further.

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