Well, well, well, what a real beauty Chateau St Pierre 2009 has turned out to be.  I must confess that when I’d first tasted it, admittedly on a rather wet and windy Tuesday morning in late March earlier this year on the opening day of the ’09 primeurs tastings, it wasn’t the most expressive of the wines shown from St Julien. Mind you, given how spectacular this appellation has been in 2009, rising above the likes of Chateau Léoville Barton and Chateau Léoville Poyferré would have been tricky. I had the opportunity of tasting St Pierre ‘09 again this month, now two thirds of the way through its elevage and the wine is simply fantastic. So if you bought this wine en primeur then well done. I wish I had!

Mas de Daumas Gassac needs little introduction, established by the idiosyncratic Aimé Guibert and his wife Véronique in the 1970s, the estate pretty much pioneered the concept of high end, boutique Vin de Pays. The first wine was made there in 1978 and for some time the estate’s red had a strong claim to being the grand cru of the Languedoc.

Jim Barry’s decadent Armagh Shiraz

Despite the perception that the country has in recent years lost out to South Africa and the combined forces of Chile and Argentina as the world’s cutting edge wine making powerhouse, Australia remains one of the most exciting places to make wine. Partly it’s because it is a unique place – the country is huge with some of the most diverse terrior in the world – but also importantly because of the open-mindedness and energy of the Aussie wine makers themselves – especially when you get amongst the privately owned wineries. 

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?