Overall Bordeaux 2006 reds can be summed up as firm, quite strong, structured wines, but for me often a bit joyless. This was certainly my immediate impression having tasted ninety or so wines from the vintage at the Master of Wine Institute’s Annual Claret tasting that took place in the wonderfully oak panelled, if rather gloomy, Vintners Hall last week. The best wines had good structure, acid and enough flesh to make complex wine eventually but the best do need time in bottle. Even mature these will always be firm wines I reckon as in this vintage there is plenty of tannin, albeit it ripe and fine enough. There were also quite a few disappointments and the vintage is not consistent across all the appellations.

The Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux held its annual horizontal tasting of the most recently bottled vintage, in this case the 2008 vintage, on Tuesday at Covent Garden’s Royal Opera House. It’s a great event where you have a hundred plus Chateaux proprietors all under one roof showing their wares – although there is never quite enough time to taste them all. More detailed notes will follow and the vintage profiles will be updated. Sadly I missed out on Sauternes and Barsac, despite skipping lunch to continue tasting, the end of session bell being rung just as I arrived at Bastor Lamontagne…I don’t know how I quite managed that error. Nevertheless overall tasting the 2008s reds was a far more enjoyable experience than working through last year’s austere, tricky 2007 vintage. The few whites from Pessac-Léognan I tasted looked very racy and attractive with more zip than 2009.

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.

In 2009 the red wines of Pessac-Léognan and Graves are characterised by a lot of colour, fruit and tannin. Generally they are very good to excellent in quality with lots of fresh fruits and richness, some more layered on the palate than others, and the tannins, while pretty big, are not generally over extracted and are very ripe.