In 2009 can Chateau Margaux achieve the impossible and be rewarded with a score greater than 100 – or greater than 20 for those a bit snobby about the percentage scoring system? Why not? If you are prepared to award the perfect score, then once perfection is achieved are there not degrees of improvement to be had? Why stop at 100? If not how exactly is further excellence defined and quantified? So does Chateau Margaux 2009 merit a score of say, 105 points out of a hundred, instead of simply one hundred?

Well 2005 Lafite does have a contender. Judging wines at such a young age – five months since the last day of harvest on 8^thOctober – is usually a tricky affair with a fair bit of filling in the gaps, but there is absolutely no doubt that Lafite has produced something truly extraordinary in 2009. Charles Chevallier was already describing the vintage as ‘truly great’ before Christmas, but tasting the wine is something else. It’s a blend of 82.5% Cabernet, 17% Merlot and 0.5% Petit Verdot and I imagine it’s around the 13.5 degree mark, if not more, yet the quality of the fruit and the ripeness of the tannins, alongside perfectly judged extraction and winemaking, mark this Lafite as magical.

There is something almost mythical about Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, the Pauillac that has produced some of the most profound, strongest and longest-lived wines of the commune. Its style is obviously very different from Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, though interestingly in 2009 the actual blend is not hugely different from it, with just marginally more Cabernet Sauvignon [88%] and correspondingly slightly less Merlot [12%]. Again the weather conditions in 2009 at Mouton, as at Lafite and in the rest of the Medoc, were virtually perfect. There were remarkable levels of sunshine and very little summer rainfall. This hydric stress, as Mouton described it, and fine weather meant that the grapes ripened slowly and to full maturity. September had hot days but cool nights, again perfect vintage conditions.

This was an extremely satisfying and strong appellation in 2009. Along with Pauillac and St Estèphe, St Julien is a contender for commune of the vintage, and has produced wines of great richness, intensity and strength in 2009. I’d be delighted to have almost all of these wines in my cellar. Given the slightly greater emphasis of Merlot in the blend here, the wines are usually a bit more approachable at early stage tastings and have more mid palate richness than the Pauillacs. They were certainly very flattering to taste and showed that there was also terrific ripeness in St Julien in this vintage.