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.

I was very impressed with Chateau Calon-Ségur and Chateau Cos d’Estournel in the St Estèphe appellation at the MW 2008 tasting last month. Calon was really fragrant and charming and looks like a good buy. Cos was full and rich and for young St Estèphe, it was pretty open and approachable already. There is a lot of fat fruit in the wine which made it feel generous, almost supple, by comparison with others in the appellation. 

The much speculated upon Lafite ’08

The MW Institute’s Annual Claret Tasting is almost too much of a good thing. Tasting all one hundred and twenty wines from Bordeaux’s finest districts requires steely determination, nifty footwork and a healthy dollop of over-ambition. You’ll also need to keep an eye on your watch as you’ve only a few hours. Then, just as you think you’ve licked it, tasting St Estèphe, Pauillac, St Julien, Margaux, Haut-Médoc and Pessac-Léognan back-to-back in the grand Vintners Hall, up come the wines of St Emilion and Pomerol, lying in wait in an adjoining room. Talk about kicking a man when he’s down. Fortunately, since last year, you can perk up with some fine Sauternes and Barsac at the very end before hailing a taxi cab and finding somewhere to lie down.

Twenty-minutes isn’t a long time, but it’s a lifetime if, on the eve of harvest, your vineyard is sat beneath a storm producing hail the size of golf balls. As extreme vineyard events go the St Estèphe hail storm that struck on September 1^st 2011 was a dramatic as they come. Not every producer was mind you. It was highly localised, passing some vineyards, clipping others but decimating quite a few. Basil Tesseron, owner of Chateau Lafon-Rochet, who made good wine in the end, described it as the viticultural equivalent of falling off the Empire State Building – a microscopically short event ending in oblivion. The immediate fear, apart from the reduction in yield and damage to those vines physically stripped of their leaves, branches and fruit, would have then been the secondary threat of rot on the remaining bunches. This fear would have been made more complex by the fact that the vineyards were approaching maturity but not quite ready to pick. Do you wait and get proper phenolic ripeness or risk losing the lot to rot? Or do you pick quickly but end up with green wines and unripe tannins? Add all this to a vintage that had seen conditions see-saw and which overall was pitifully dry. Pouring over meteorological charts at that few days of harvest was probably all you could do – that and having a stiff gin and tonic and go with your instinct. Close your eyes and feel the force Luke.