Tasted on my first morning last week, Mouton was also the first of the first growths I tasted. I can remember last year’s 2009 clearly and my impression was that in 2010 Phillipe Dhalluin has actually trumped that wine. I also thought that Clerc Milon and d’Armailhac had switched characters slightly, the d’Armailhac slightly more reticent and the Clerc Milon seemingly more forward and come hither. Subsequent tastings at the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux reversed this thought slightly, but there is no doubt that both have made exceptional wines in 2010, Clerc Milon especially. There is a concentration and a density to both these wines. Petit Mouton is also most certainly even better than 2009, and I was struck in general by the step change in the quality of the so called ‘second’ wines of the first growths tasted across the week.

If you need an insight into the level of determination and effort required to return an estate to the top league then you need to look no further than the contemporary renaissance at Chateau Léoville-Poyferré. Twenty-five years is the time frame Anne Cuvelier points to when she looks back at the efforts that her cousin Didier Cuvelier has put in here since he began managing the property in 1979. Since then there has been extensive work in the vineyards. Old rootstocks were torn out and replaced and the property, then just 48 hectares, brought up to the 80 hectares now under production. In the cellar there has been much investment too and Michel Rolland is now the estate’s consultant, though Poyferré also has its own in-house talent in the form of winemaker Isabelle Davin.