You can always rely on Pomerol to provide something lush. It’s a tough call arriving at these wines last as I did at the MW tasting, particularly after some hefty numbers in St Emilion, but the fact is that Pomerol’s wines felt more nimble on their feet than those of their immediate Right Bank neighbour. There was also freshness and delicacy here. Along with the reds of Pessac-Léognan, many of these Pomerols are attractive already, and should provide satisfying drinking in the medium term.

Overall Pomerol has produced some very vibrant wines in 2011 despite a tricky growing season. Maybe the clay soils that the region is famous for helped guard against the early drought and heat spikes. September rain too undoubtedly affected some and rot would have been a concern. There is variability here, however, particularly among the less well known estates. Some display under ripe characters, others have over extracted, some, it seems, are green and extracted. It’s the usual 2011 story then, here ,as elsewhere. Making the best wines needed laborious work in the vineyard, the grapes required strict selection at harvest and the resultant wines suited a gentle hand in the cellar.

Chateau La Pointe held the UGCB tastings in Pomerol

Pomerol looks to have had a great vintage in 2010. The freshness, balance and concentration of the best wines here is quite remarkable. As usual there is plumpness and accessibility but there is grip and stuffing too. Some are a bit simple and a few rather jammy and late picked in feel, but these seem to be the exception in what are a very homogeneous set of wines. One caveat here is that my tastings were limited to those at the Unions des Grands Crus held at Chateau La Pointe and those at the Cercle Rive Droite. Amongst the picks here were Chateau Petit-Village, Chateau La Conseillante and Chateau Clinet which are at least as good if not even better than in 2009. I was also very impressed with Chateau Fayat, Chateau Feytit-Clinet, Chateau Gazin, Chateau La Croix de Gay, Chateau Le Bon Pasteur, Chateau Gazin, Chateau Nenin and Chateau Rouget. Good value can also be had with Chateau Bourgneuf, Chateau Clos du Clocher, Chateau Taillefer and Chateau Montviel. There is such a lot of joy in these wines.

Here’s is a brief summary of the top Bordeaux 2009 wines I tasted in late March and early April.  Big caveats here in the selection. Although I did taste 160 plus 2009s, I didn’t get to all the Chateaux I wanted to in the trip. The most notable omissions in the Médoc were, Cos d’Estournel, Montrose, Latour, Pontet Canet, Ducru, Las Cases and Palmer, in Pessac-Léognan Haut-Brion and La Mission, in St Emilion Cheval Blanc and Ausone and the JP Moueix properties in Pomerol, obviously Pétrus, Lafleur-Pétrus and Trotanoy. I tasted most of the Sauternes with the exception of d’Yqyem and Climens. These taken together are clearly an important bunch! I hope to visit these properties in the coming months so news on them will follow when I do. Anyway, here are the scores of my best so far. Hope it’s useful.