It’s been impossible to avoid 2009 Burgundy what with all the glossy en primeur offers dropping through the letter box and a series of daily tastings put on by merchants at venues across London. In a nutshell, the reds 2009s are hailed as excellent, reminiscent of 1999, though maybe not quite up to the majesty of 2005. The whites, described as better than expected, are not seen as long-lived but are forward and enjoyable.

 Vineyards at Chateau Meyney overlooking the Gironde

OK, so you’d expect to come away inspired by a trip to Chateau Margaux having spent an hour or so with the marvelously enthusiastic Paul Pontallier. You’d also expect to have a more profound sense of the natural beauty and deceptive simplicity of fine winemaking after spending some time with Alfred Tesseron at Chateau Pontet Canet. And you’d have to be made of stone not to be awe inspired by the new chais assembled by Jean-Guillaume Prats at Chateau Cos d’Estournel or the quality of his controversial 2009 grand vin whatever your verdict. But would you really expect to be all fired up after a visit to Chateau Grand-Puy Ducasse? Probably not, but that’s just what happened to me after I’d spent an afternoon there. I’ll explain more later but first some background.

At long last the Medoc Cru Bourgeois hiatus is over. Following the legal challenges that overthrew the controversial 2003 classification, Frederique de Lamothe, the director of the l’Alliance de Cru Bourgeois du Medoc [www.crus-bourgeois.com] announced last week, after three years of painstaking effort, the first new selection of wines entitled to the Cru Bourgeois name. It is not, in fact, a classification at all this time round, rather a list of those wines that have met a set of standards which entitles them to use the term. 243 Chateau have been selected from a total of 290 that applied for inclusion, a selection made following blind tastings based on the 2008 vintage conducted by a panel made up of professional tasters, this time with no chateau owners involved, one of the main gripes of those who felt unfairly treated in the 2003 classification.  

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.