Baton down the hatches, tell your mother you won’t be back for a while and extend your bank overdraft…here comes the most hyped vintage ever, the juggernaut piled high with euros that is Bordeaux 2009!!! Already there are unconfirmed reports that it is the best vintage since 2008, unequivocally the greatest vintage of the 21st century (so long as the subsequent 91 are crap.) It is also numerically significant. Just as 2008 finished on a digit that is lucky in China, “9″ is lucky in Greenland and therefore chateaux proprietors are anticipating massive demand from Nuuk. The Bordelais also claim that a recently unearthed tablet from the 3rd century has indicated that “8″ is not the number that brings good fortune in China.
No, no, no.
It is in fact: “9″.
Whoever did the maths back then forgot to add “1″.
Today is the Cercle Rive Droite dégustation of Right Bank 2009s at the salubrious venue of the French ambassador’s residence in Kensington Park Gardens. I would like to thank the publicists for failing to inform anyone about the tasting, which meant that I could taste in relative peace (it took persistent Google searches to find that this annual tasting actually existed…an invitation is normally more helpful.) Maybe that’s the new tactic for the impending 2009 campaign? Hype the vintage to the rafters and then refuse to let anyone to the wines. Think of the mystique, the enigma that would inevitably shroud the vintage. No-one would notice…we’ll be on the 2010 primeur campaign by the time we are scratching our heads thinking: “Did I miss something?”
Anyway, there are some great wines, particularly hailing from Fronsac, although some of alcohol levels get in the way of the wine. Afterwards I catch the tube down to South Ken. and walk down to Roberson Wine Merchants for their 1982 tasting, desperately seeking any decent form of sustenance i.e. KFC, as I am famished. There is no KFC and I consequently wonder just how property values can have reached such stratospheric levels in this enclave of London?
The 1982 tasting has its own ups and downs (e.g. Grand Puy Lacoste and an out of condition Haut Brion respectively), although irrespective of the wines I always thoroughly enjoy these events. Afterwards I am cajoled into another talking head interview with Robersons on the proviso that I do not look like a heroin-addicted insomniac, as depicted in the BBR Burgundy 2008 video blog. I dare not look…I know that I will look like a sleep deprived junkie, so I am better off avoiding the humiliation.
Filed under: bordeaux, en primeur 2010 Tagged: | 1982, bordeaux 2009, cercle rive droite, greenland, kfc, robersons, video blog
