I hope to expand on these tasting notes soon. Despite several [costly] speeding tickets that later turned up in the post, I arrived fractionally too late to the UGCB event held at Château Talbot to taste a number of wines from the St Julien commune. These included some of my favourites Gloria, Gruaud-Larose and St Pierre as well as the Bartons [Léoville and Langoa]. Below are the notes on the St Julien properties I did visit individually during primeurs week –  Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, Château Léoville-Las-Cases and Château Léoville Poyferré. There are also notes on Château Moulin Riche, Château du Glana, Clos du Marquis and Lalande-Borie. Hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to correct the omissions here at a later point.

The consistency at Château Léoville Poyferré has been wonderful over the past decade. The property regularly vies with Château Léoville-Las-Cases and Château Ducru Beaucaillou as the best wine of the appellation. It is amongst the finest made in Bordeaux. Great wine has been produced here in 2016. I don’t think I’m pushing the boat out too far in suggesting that Léoville Poyferré 2016 is verging on the quality of the 2005, 2009 and 2010 qualitatively speaking. The balance is phenomenal; the texture remarkable. Château Moulin Riche, made from a separate 20 hectare terroir in St Julien, may well be the best yet produced. It is certainly the most impressive sample I’ve tasted. Overall it underlines the excitement I felt when I tasted the top St Juliens in this vintage earlier in the year.

Margaux played a blinder as an appellation in 2015. While that vintage proved tricky further north on the left bank due to rain, Margaux produced some of its best ever wine. 2016 can also be considered a great success. These are two fascinating vintages to compare here. Coming to these wines earlier this year I was concerned that the 2016 summer drought may have affected some of Margaux’s drier terroirs but, with a few exceptions, this didn’t appear to be the case. At the Union des Grand Crus de Bordeaux’s tasting generally there was plenty of that wonderful Margaux perfume on offer, lots of ripe fruit and the beautifully textured tannin that so defines this vintage. If there was over extraction in some, many have made wines to rival and even exceed 2015.

Château Haut-Bailly has made an extremely impressive wine in 2016. It is a hypothetical blend of 2010 and 2015 for me. It has something of the structure of the former with the plushness and appeal of the latter. It emphasizes again the quality of the vintage as well as the fabulous terroir at Haut-Bailly. The care and attention to detail in the vineyard and in the winemaking here is also second to none. This wine caps a string of beauties [2005, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015] in which Haut-Bailly has made some of the best and most exciting red wine in Bordeaux.