The vineyard at Chateau Beau-Séjour-Bécot

For me St Emilion was the trickiest commune to judge in 2009. The year had some problems. Hail the size of golf balls did much damage to the vineyards in May [damage was also reported in the Médoc at the time] and a few days of rain in mid September may have cause problems for some vintners who harvested shortly afterwards. My tasting was limited to those wines on show at the Union des Grands Crus tasting at Chateau Beau-Séjour Bécot. So clearly there are a few caveats to the St Emilion review here.

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.  

The great 2009 vintage continues into Moulis and Listrac. Real consistency here with intensity and concentration. The style is as tight as usual but with additional levels of richness and layers and freshness too. Chateau Poujeaux is quite outstanding. Chateau Chasse-Spleen and Chateau Maucaillou not that far behind. Assuming prices stay reasonable these wines below should offer excellent value for money.

There is something almost mythical about Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, the Pauillac that has produced some of the most profound, strongest and longest-lived wines of the commune. Its style is obviously very different from Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, though interestingly in 2009 the actual blend is not hugely different from it, with just marginally more Cabernet Sauvignon [88%] and correspondingly slightly less Merlot [12%]. Again the weather conditions in 2009 at Mouton, as at Lafite and in the rest of the Medoc, were virtually perfect. There were remarkable levels of sunshine and very little summer rainfall. This hydric stress, as Mouton described it, and fine weather meant that the grapes ripened slowly and to full maturity. September had hot days but cool nights, again perfect vintage conditions.