At a time when the Bordeaux 2009 is grabbing all the attention – this week Chateau Mouton-Rothschild ‘09 was released at a cool £8000 a case – it almost feels like that previous superstar vintage 2005 is being overlooked, certainly if prices are anything to go by. In fact 2005 is almost looking a bit undervalued, amazing considering the records broken in 2006 when those wines were first released. With that in mind I had a look at some of the wines that I bought back then just to see how that vintage is faring and to fill in some gaps in my tastings of them. All the wines were from the left bank and there was remarkable harmony and finesse to them all.

The hot and dry vintage conditions in 2009 were ideal for the clay soils of St Estèphe. On the basis of the half-dozen wines that I tasted, St Estèphe looks to have had a excellent vintage. Chateau Lafon-Rochet in particular was outstanding, as were Chateau Ormes de Pez and Chateau Haut Marbuzet. The following wines [except for Haut Marbuzet] were tasted at the Union des Grand Cru tasting of the wines from St Estèphe at Chateau Batailley on 30 March and 1 April.

A brilliant set of wines from the Haut-Médoc appellation in 2009. These should prove great value as many are out-performing themselves and show what a wonderful vintage this is amongst the supposedly ‘lesser’ Chateaux. There’s nothing lesser about the wines though. There is a suppleness and seductive quality that makes these wines so pleasurable already, but at the same time there is real intensity and concentration beneath which is disguised because of the exceptional ripeness of the fruit. I found nothing really loose here at all.

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.