2009 is a glorious vintage in Sauternes and Barsac too

Don’t let the rave reviews of Bordeaux’s red wines in 2009 distract from the superb quality of its sweet wines in this vintage. Producers were exclaiming from the off here how excited they were by the quality of the harvest here, seen as the most exciting since 2001.

So we have a week to collect ourselves during Vinexpo, Bordeaux’s wine trade fair that runs this week, to assess just where we are with the controversial release prices of the 2010 Bordeaux vintage. If you thought prices for 2009 were a bit heady then so far the prices of some 2010s have been eye-watering. In certain notable cases prices are up 40% year on year and that on top of similar increases last year. You wonder why Bank of England chief Mervyn King is losing sleep about the UK’s paltry 4.5% inflation rate. Small beer Merv, get with it. Bordeaux’s up ten times as much.

Overall 2010 not as rich and sweet in feeling as 2009 but there seems more elegance here and maybe it is bit more akin to 2007 but with more strength. The best wines had great balancing acidity which makes them extremely fresh. I’d also imagine that the wines will be pretty long-lived. The wines are listed below in terms of how I’ve marked them. Chateau d’Yquem and Chateau Climens are the important exceptions here and were not tasted.

After tasting two hundred plus wines in the past week, I’ve found plenty of fruit, tannin and acid, not always in that order, but certainly in number in Bordeaux 2010. There is a lot of everything in Bordeaux 2010. Lots of colour, often dense saturated colour across the board, but then there is also plenty of extract, tannin and acid, and then more acid and tannin still. It makes the wines a bit tricky to judge. In fact I spent a lot of time re-tasting wines because I found some difficult to evaluate. 2010 is a great vintage in many respects, but there is irregularity too. Winemaking judgement was exceptionally important in this vintage, with such dense, thick and concentrated berries those properties with a lightness of touch and flexibility have made the best wines. Those that have extracted too much have made monsters, with tannins and grip to match, not that the wines divide so neatly into those camps, I wish it were that easy. 2009 was undoubtedly more straightforward to judge at the same stage last year.