Alasdair Nicol gets to the bottom of the hype over the latest vintage from the iconic region

 
The final vintage of the finest Bordeaux wines from the last decade has just finished its en primeur sales in the French region this summer and, as expected, the 2009 vintage was as overhyped and financially inflated as ever.

For those who don’t know, en primeur is the selling of Bordeaux classified growths (such as Lafite, Latour, Mouton) directly from the barrel before the wines have been bottled. Generally, the only indication of the quality of what the buyer is getting is what critics like Robert Parker Jr. have written about the vintage.

The 2009 Bordeaux wines are supposedly one of the best of the last decade. There was considerable hype surrounding the fantastic 2000 and 2005 vintages, and 2009 is supposed to rank up there with these two years.

So what do the wines taste like? I must admit, I have not tried them, but then again there are only a handful of people that have. The word is that they are robust, strong and powerful wines but with a velvety smooth palate and still enough tannin to make your gums and mouth lining feel like you are deliberately punishing them.

High levels of tannin at en primeur stage is a determining factor in the cellar life of wines and the 2009 vintage is probably rendered undrinkable for at least another 20 years because of them. Of course, this means that those who were able to buy the wines at the outset are going to see a significant increase in value over this time and make a fortune on the open market or at auction.

This vintage has long been hallmarked as an expensive year, due to the similarity in conditions to the legendary 1947 or 1982 vintages. The big question this year is who is going to buy up all the wines. The odds were on the Chinese, as the French had priced the Americans out of the market and, in fact, 60 per cent of all sales of First and Second Growths are now destined for China.

I suggest waiting until around 2014 to give the wine a try, and if it is drinking fairly well (there will still be a lot of tannin but it will have benefited from lying down for four more years) then pick some up then. Yes, it will be expensive as Bordeaux wine rarely drops in price, but if you are looking for a new vintage to cellar then this could very well be the one.

If, like me, you witnessed a plethora of friends getting either married or having babies in 2009, then I cannot think of anything better to buy them as a keepsake of that special moment than a bottle of First Growth from the 2009 vintage.