It was the day of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux 2009 tasting in London, and my senses were on full alert. You might expect this, of course, if you are already aware of the fine reputation worn by the 2009 vintage in Bordeaux, or indeed if you have already tasted the wines yourself (provided you agree with the prevailing opinion). My reactions on the morning of the tasting were physical as well as emotional, and were very tangible. I could feel that my heart rate was slightly elevated, and that my heart was pumping harder, strange sensations which might be described as palpitations, but that word - with all its fragile, swooning connotations - feels rather inadequate. It was more that I felt tense, aware, and ready for action. Indeed, it was a classic fight or flight response. My hands suddenly had a very slightly clammy feel to them, and my hearing seemed more acute. Perhaps my blood pressure was up too? Were my pupils dilated? It certainly felt like it.

What, you might ask, had set this acute reaction in motion? Unfortunately for me this very visceral event was not being made in response to the washing of 2009 Léoville-Poyferré, one of my favourite wines on the day, over the tastebuds. It was only just 8:45am, and the tasting had in fact yet to kick off. I was en route by train, supposedly heading south into London, having landed at Stansted airport only a short while before. Note I say supposedly. The problem was, with little more than an hour and a half to go before the beginning of what you could argue is the most important tasting of the year for Winedoctor - the latest Bordeaux vintage, fresh in the bottle, and in this instance 2009, a great year - I had just realised I was on the wrong train, heading north, towards Stratford-upon-Avon.

Stratford-upon-Avon? How in the world did I end up on a train bound for Shakespeare's birthplace?

I reflected for a moment. I had sauntered onto the train at Stansted on personal autopilot, this being a journey I have made dozens of times before. Was it possible that I had boarded the wrong train? Feeling secure in seemingly familiar surroundings, I hadn't paid that much attention to where the train was headed, as the platform was the usual one for trains heading into London. Perhaps I had simply boarded the wrong train? Having conceded that possibility, however, I also reminded myself that I hadn't noticed any trains on the departure schedule there that were not marked up as the London-bound Stansted Express. Whatever the explanation though, this train certainly wasn't the right one for me; my destination should have been Liverpool Street Station but, at some point during chapter two of Terry Theise's Reading Between the Vines, both an automated announcement and then the conductor clearly stated that I was headed elsewhere, a destination then confirmed by the scrolling electronic sign above the door at the end of the carriage. Oh hell - I was on the wrong train!

Desperate situations call for desperate measures, and I swiftly formulated Plan A. No well-prepared taster of young Bordeaux travels anywhere without a latex Robert Parker mask (well, not quite true, but I can think of at least one who never travels without Parker's tasting notes by his side), and so the solution was simple. One, surreptitiously don Robert Parker mask. Two, pull emergency alarm cord. Three, demand - well within Parker's rights, naturally - that the train be turned around, and pointed in the direction of Covent Garden, the tasting venue. Four, in the event of any trouble, claim diplomatic immunity and hopefully slip into the crowd, never to be seen again. Any fallout or complaint that comes to light on erobertparker.com can be deleted. Any that appears elsewhere can be discredited and disregarded as irrelevant, the tittle-tattle of 'blobbers' (Parker's pet name for the bloggers of the world), the Anti-Flavour Wine Elite, acid-freaks or similar. Brilliant - I had a plan! But what about a back-up plan? I racked my brains, and came up with a slightly less fiendish Plan B, which was.....sit tight and do nothing. Do these two plans act as a metaphor for the differences between the English and American palates, do you think? If so, if A is Robert Parker, who is plan B?

Happily for me I went with the 'British' option, Plan B. First, because Plan A would probably have seen me arrested. Second, because after a just a short time had passed during which hundreds of commuters crammed onto the train I realised we were not headed for Stratford-upon-Avon, but the more simply named Stratford, a suburb of north London (hence the now-heaving crowd of commuters). Due to a breakdown of overhead power supply, the train was terminating at a different station, in Stratford, one stop before Liverpool Street. I eventually alighted from the train and one slightly-longer-than-usual journey on the London Underground later I found myself at the Opera House at Covent Garden, and before long I had that glass of Léoville-Poyferré in my no-longer clammy hand. My latest assessment of the 2009 vintage - the first look at the wines in bottle, following on from my en primeur barrel sample notes - could now begin.

The Story of 2009

I'm not a great fan of reports from the vineyard at harvest time, at least with regards to their usefulness as measure of the quality of the vintage. Sure, it's fun to hear and read about activity in the vineyard when the fruit is being picked, and there's nothing wrong with a little fun! But I hold the view that any assessment of the fruit by even the most enthusiastic of wine critics will always, apart from the rare instance when the critic in question has some background in viticulture and winemaking (the majority do not), rely far too much on the words of the technical director. And without critical appraisal and filtering of the information provided, the critic lacking the experience needed to achieve this, the 'Look at the Lovely Fruit' reports sail dangerously close to Bordeaux puffery at times, propaganda conveyed directly from the châteaux to the consumer through the reporting individual, who becomes more conduit than critic. The primeur tastings of barrel samples certainly have their problems but, acknowledging all these flaws without expounding on them in any greater detail here, the embryonic wine in the tasting glass can at least be placed in a context (all the wines the critic has ever tasted before), thereby adding some semblance of independence to the assessment.

Bordeaux 2009 What I do find to be relevant, however, is some knowledge of the growing season; you don't need a degree in climatology to realise that, in marginal cool climate viticultural regions, years which are damp, dreary and oidium- or mildew-infested (or both) can generally be related to more acidic and greener-tasting vintages (which isn't necessarily a bad thing - these vintages have their fans). And, by contrast, those that are characterised by warmer temperatures, plentiful sunshine and sporadic showers that hopefully come along just when they are needed can be related to great vintages, richer in terms of flavour, structure and hopefully with good balance too. The correlation is not as strong as it was in the 1970s I think (the Bordelais do much better with 'weaker' vintages these days), but it still exists. Happily, for those that find weather reports less enticing than tasting notes, any such report for the 2009 vintage is likely to be short. A cold winter which kept the vines dormant until April (as seen on the left, pictured at La Mission Haut-Brion in the first week of April 2010) was followed by a summer that was generally relaxed, easy-going and warm. The most notable event of the growing season was a freak hailstorm, easily forgotten by us consumers, a nuance lost in the shadows cast by the vintage's grand reputation, but I suspect it is not so easily forgotten by those in charge at the châteaux that were affected. Much of the damage affected 'lesser' vineyards in the Entre-Deux-Mers, but some vineyards in Bourg, Blaye and St Emilion were also badly hit. Production at Trottevieille, for example, was just 700 cases for the entire vintage.

Thereafter conditions were generally stable and there was a slow and steady move towards ripening. The ultimate challenge was deciding when to pick; the point at which the fruit is harvested often depends on a battle of wills, with the technical directors of the leading Bordeaux châteaux on one side, and the vagaries of the autumn weather on the other. As harvest approaches the technical director and vineyard manager enter Groundhog Day, checking the Météo every evening before going to bed (not usually together, although there is not usually any edict against this), rising at the crack of dawn to taste and analyse the fruit in the vineyard, eyeing the sky above nervously, hoping to eke out another day's ripeness in the fruit. Eventually they crack, and the threat of rain forces them to send the pickers out into the fields. The 2009 vintage didn't provide this tipping point though, and the managers and directors had to send the team out based purely on the analyses and tasting, while the sun continued to beat down on the vines. In the majority of cases I suspect - from tasting the wines - this was managed well, especially on the left bank, but I fear there was not such rigorous self-control at one or two right bank estates, and as a result there are a handful of wines where the tannins and alcohol have run amok. The primeur tastings suggested it, and although the wines from the right bank were not great in number at this tasting, one or two seemed to confirm these early fears.

Tasting: Then and Now

Reports from the primeur tastings of the 2009 vintage were on one hand that the wines were very easy to taste, and on the other quite difficult. What made the wines easy to taste - in my own opinion - were the soft textures that they possessed, keeping the tannins well hidden, bringing a feeling of approachability to the wines. The only difficulty I found was that a few right bank wines, as suggested above, seemed rather baked and alcoholic. Many others, however, also cited the weather as being a cause of some difficulty. Strong winds threatened to blow away marquees, battering the tasters as they made their way from one venue to the next, and at one point the Dordogne burst its banks, forcing us to take a detour around flooded streets in order to reach the Moueix offices which are positioned, somewhat disconcertingly considering the events of the day, on the Dordogne quayside.

Low atmospheric pressure is also said, by some, to have a negative effect on the aromatic profile of many wines, and although the mechanism remains up for debate the most commonly proffered explanation is related to carbon dioxide moving out of solution with the arrival of low pressure (taking with it freshness and vigour) and moving into solution with the arrival of high pressure (reinvigorating the wine). Although I'm prepared to believe that some aspect of wine tasting may be influenced by the weather and atmospheric pressure, I'm not yet convinced personally, and I have a particular doubt concerning the plausibility of the carbon dioxide solubility theory. I won't go into this tangential issue in any greater depth here, precisely because I have already done so elsewhere. And so, to cut a long story short though, and to place these comments in some context, the atmospheric pressure over London on the day of the tasting was a shade over 1010 mbar, not particularly different to the conditions in Bordeaux when tasting at the primeurs in April 2010, when pressure hit a low of 1003 mbar. These are marginal differences, and yet they are cited by some as being responsible for huge variations in the way wines may taste. For more detail, see my recent blog post, entitled Pressure-Sensitive?

And so now, onto the wines. Tasting big, lush, textured, soft and hedonistic (I suggest nothing to do with the atmospheric pressure, but merely the style of the vintage!), 2009 is a year that I am tempted to name The Velvet Vintage. It remains, as was the case in April 2010, an unchallenging vintage to taste. The wines have great structure underneath, layers of tannin and fresh acidity, but such is the weight of the velvety drapes of blackcurrant, cherry, vanilla and creamy fruit placed on top these lower layers are often difficult to spot. Unless you go looking for them, of course, in which case you slowly begin to perceive them, both tannin and acidity. These wines have the power to deceive, and I would not be surprised if some tasters harboured private doubts over the vintage based on this tasting, as many of the wines displayed a soft, formless midpalate. But this is an illusion, a trap to catch the unwary, so take any comments you might read about the impending death of the structureless, shapeless, empty-midpalate 2009 vintage with a large pinch of salt. These wines may be soft and seductive right now, tasting unlike any other Bordeaux vintage I have assessed at this age (which, for the detailed Winedoctor reports, ranges from 2003 to 2009), but they are stuffed with potential. If you have some, hold on tight, because I suspect these wines will give some incredible and most probably unique drinking experiences in the future.

I continue my report with Pessac-Léognan. (15/11/11)