The fading of the leaves from green to shades of golden yellow, vibrant red and ultimately deathly brown signals not only the tightening grip of autumn, but also the arrival of young Bordeaux tasting-time. I wish I could attend every Bordeaux tasting opportunity that exists in the UK, for they are legion, but I have settled on two regular dates as essential components in my annual tasting regimen, the bare minimum in my yearly Bordeaux "data set". The rest I squeeze in, if and when I can. These two events, both reliably informative in my experience, are tastings of young Bordeaux vintages not long in bottle. I see these assessments as being most valuable for Winedoctor, tastings of the finished and bottled wines which hopefully remove the veil of hazy uncertainty that naturally accompanies any tasting notes on barrel samples, such as those at the annual primeurs circus.

The first of these two dates with Bacchus is the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux (UGC) tasting in the third week of October, a tasting of the vintage at two years of age, freshly bottled, most recently the 2008 vintage, and the second is the annual Institute of Masters of Wine (IMW) tasting in the first week of November. This latter event showcases the wines four years from the date the fruit was harvested. Not only is each tasting individually of merit, but coming so close together they do tend to encourage comparison of one vintage with the other. Benchmarking vintages in this way is only natural; just how many times have you read a Bordeaux commentator trying to communicate the style of a vintage with "a little like 1988, only the tannins are rather more like 2005, but with the freshness of 1996", or some other similar vintage mash-up, in the latest harvest report? To understand vintages through contrasts and comparisons with those we already know can be useful, establishing a place for the wines in our own personal Bordeaux pantheon.

Bordeaux 2006 And so to this year's IMW tasting, which as usual was held at the Vintner's Hall, home to the Vintner's Company, one of London's original livery companies (essentially Medieval trade associations) with a charter dating back to 1363. This ancient institution is one of only three (the others being the Crown and the Dyer's Company) that own swans on the Thames, hence the presence of this wonderful statue (shown left) outside the hall (I did try to take a photograph of him and his swan with the columned portico of Vintner's Hall in the background, but the light was wrong, and every conceivable angle resulted in a lamp-post protruding from his hat, so this rather more anonymous backdrop will have to suffice).

This association with swans dates back to at least 1509, but the focus of my attention on this visit was not so ancient of course. I was here to cast the spotlight on the wines of the 2006 vintage, one to which I have already given much consideration on Winedoctor, not only in my vintage review, but also in my limited tasting of barrel samples in 2007, my tastings of white Pessacs and other wines at one year of age, and in my introduction when assessing the wines at two years of age with the UGC. Looking back at my words from those tastings two, three and not-quite-four years ago, a recurring theme was my comparison with the 2005 vintage. Well, as I have already said, to compare one vintage with another is only human. But let's get this out of the way now so we can move on to more interesting assessments; 2006 is no 2005. Not in terms of the quality of the growing season and the harvested fruit and, more importantly considering that they have been available for tasting from bottle for two years, not in terms of the wines themselves.

Vintage Recap

Of course this might have been another 2005, if the early promise of the vintage had been realised. The year kicked off with a suggestion that yields would be down (thanks to reduced flowering as a consequence of drought, a spring frost and failure of some fruit to set) and this was followed up by a vine-happy heatwave through May, June and July. But any thoughts that this was 2005 all over again soon fizzled away with the cool and rather damp weather that dominated through the following months. Instead of perfect fruit and wines that made themselves as the Bordelais had enjoyed the preceding vintage, this year they were dealing with uneven ripening, rain-swollen grapes and the threat of rot. It was a vintage which, just as I wrote when discussing 2008 at two years, warranted careful assessment.

And despite my repeated visits to the wines to carry out those careful assessments, 2006 has until now been a vintage that I feel I have struggled to get to grips with, any true understanding of the wines having perhaps been hindered rather than helped by my prior insistence in looking at them contrasted against the backdrop of the 2005 vintage. A good example, perhaps, of when the natural desire to benchmark did me no favours. But a new examination of the wines as they stand by themselves, as well as in contrast to other vintages, more realistic comparisons such as those from 2008 so recently tasted, I think provides for a more informed opinion.

And that was exactly my purpose in attending this tasting, to take a fresh look at the 2006s. Little did I realise that a plan had been hatched in the World of Fine Wine offices to try to scupper my assessment and note-taking. When the WFW scribe Michael Schuster set up his computer next to mine on the Vintner's Hall piano, at the end of the main tasting room, I had innocently thought it a convivial move, or at least simply a desire to plug into the nearby electrical socket. It was not until he subsequently launched his attack, sending a shower of 2006 Cheval Blanc (you've got to hand it to Michael, he does it in style - no minor grand cru from St Emilion for him) towards my laptop in an attempt to bring my note-taking to a premature end, that I realised his true intent. He apologised of course, tried to make out it was an accident, that he had unintentionally side-swiped his glass in my direction, but I've marked the card of this modern-day John Booth. Happily for my machine the wine created more of a paddling pool around its feet than the current-shorting, keyboard-gumming tidal wave that was no doubt intended, and with a little mopping up being all that was required I was soon able to continue. But I will clearly have to keep an eye out for Schuster, and the rest of the WFW gang in future....

Tasting the Wines, Four Years On

Bordeaux 2006 Having recovered from my first ever assassination attempt, let's get back to the wines and the vintage in question. First of all it is clear that 2006 has been a very successful year for the Bordelais and, provided you can stomach the price tags, there are plenty of appealing wines to be found here, on both banks of the Gironde. Looking across the entire region there are as always some communes that have performed better than others, and some châteaux that have put together stunning wines whereas others have produced something with, shall we say, a little less sheen. But this variability is nothing new for Bordeaux, and I will deal with how the different communes performed in my region-by-region breakdown, starting first with Pessac-Léognan.

Sticking with generalities for the moment then, just how much attention should we be paying to the 2006 vintage as a whole? More than we already are, is my opinion after this tasting. First, we have here wines that are superior to those produced in 2007. This is no great surprise of course, as that latter year was the most difficult for the Bordelais since the disastrous vintages of the early 1990s I think. More importantly perhaps, I found some wines that were superior to those tasted very recently from the 2008 vintage, although in many cases quality was very close, sometimes 2006 being the better wine, sometimes 2008. It is style rather than quality that really sets the two vintages apart.

There are few communes where quality seems to be obviously superior in one vintage over the other. The very attractive 2008 right bank wines (like those that originate from the vineyards around the church in Pomerol church, pictured in early 2010, above) are very close in terms of quality to those from 2006. Having said that my assessment on the right bank does only take in a small handful of wines, with only limited overlap between the two vintages, and it impossible to make any further distinction based on this very finite data-set. There are a few wines, for sure, that are superior in 2008, but the 2006s are impressive.

On the left bank in 2008 there was considerable variation in quality, from the appealing crystalline-fruited St Juliens down to the more lacklustre wines of Margaux. The wines of St Julien have more substance in 2006 than in 2008 although they have less well-defined fruit (again quality overall is close) and Pauillac in 2006 has more composure (but again there are some superior wines in 2008). Of the four Médoc communes it is really only in Margaux that one vintage clearly trumps the other; the lacklustre wines of 2008 fade into the shadows when placed against the superior (although still rather patchy) 2006s. As for Pessac-Léognan though, the difference is much more apparent, as 2006 just cleans up; the wines I tasted from 2006 were just delicious in every case (again, yes, it is a small sample). Nevertheless, if you are a fan of this particular region of Bordeaux, 2006 is certainly a not-to-be-missed vintage for you.

All this means, summing up, is that from the trio of vintages that lie between the exorbitantly priced 2005 at one end, and the ultra-exorbitantly priced 2009 at the other, it is 2007 that should be avoided (unless the wines come down to a price approximating their true quality...which isn't likely) and we should look to a mix of 2006 (especially Pessac-Léognan and the right bank) and 2008 (especially St Julien and again the right bank) for some of the best wines. I think you get some highs in 2008 (Pichon-Baron, Léoville-Poyferré, and although I have only tasted barrel samples stunning wines from Petrus, Cheval Blanc) and better fruit purity, whereas you get some highs in 2006 (Mouton-Rothschild, La Mission, Pavie) and better substance and textures. For more on which wines and which communes perfumed best, I will include this sort of detail in my communal-regional accounts, to be published over the next few days. (16/11/10)