There is delicacy and finesse on offer at Cheval Blanc in 2012. It is not a blockbuster but offers freshness and attractive balance and it should put on further weight. It’s certainly not as dramatic as some other efforts in St Emilion in 2012. The blend is in favour of Merlot here this year [54%], a clue as to the character of the vintage and perhaps how the Cabernet Franc turned out. I suppose the real question here is price. Cheval Blanc has priced extremely firmly in the past few vintages but will there be a Mouton-like reduction in 2012?

Even in the most consistent year a Bordeaux vintage is complex. 2012 is far from a consistent year. Poor weather caused uneven flowering at the start of the growing cycle, this led to great variation in ripening, and after what eventually proved a hot and dry summer, vintage rain caused difficulties. It’s a vintage that is heterogeneous in a great many places, especially on the Left Bank. One thing is not in any doubt, however. The vintage has produced Merlot of considerable beauty and it is the quality of this variety that stuck in the mind during Primeurs week.

At the primeurs tastings in Bordeaux in April 2011 I had thought that St Emilion in 2010 had bettered the wines made here than in 2009. That vintage, for me which had looked in many cases a bit over-blown and tannic early on, rounded out during elévage nicely. Now tasting through the 2010 wines at the same stage after this vintage has finished its time in barrel, it doesn’t feel quite as knockout as I had imagined. That’s not to say there aren’t many excellent wines from this appellation in 2010, but I was disappointed by some which misfired and, as ever, a number of wines that feel reduced, late picked and over-extracted – not a problem if you like leaden, plodding wine, but surely one if you like a bit of vitality and freshness.

Great vintages are consistent from cask, to bottle, to glass, and so it is proving with Bordeaux 2010. Tasting this vintage at the Union des Grand Crus de Bordeaux’s annual horizontal at Covent Garden last November there is no doubt that 2010, now in bottle, is delivering on the exceptional promise it showed during the Bordeaux primeurs week in April 2011. It remains a fascinating vintage and a wonderful partner to 2009. If the precocious and deceptively easy charms of the extraordinary 2009 vintage appeal to the heart, then 2010 is definitely a vintage for the head.