Bordeaux 2006 at Ten Years: Pauillac
When it comes to my own drinking, my hand is likely to settle on a bottle from St Julien more than any other commune. To me, the wines of that appellation epitomise the left-bank style. Pauillac is never ignored for long though, and I am aware that for many Bordeaux drinkers Pauillac provides the apogee of what Bordeaux has to offer, in terms of Cabernet-dominant wines at least.
This is hardly surprising, after all three of the five first growths are located here, and so it makes sense to look to these three estates first. Even at the primeurs in April 2007 the 2006 Château Mouton-Rothschild was widely touted as the wine of the vintage, and tasting it myself – most recently at four years of age, back in 2010 – it was not hard to see why. Now, as it approaches ten years of age, it has a spicy confidence and charming, caressing structure; it is still clearly a very lovely wine, although I did not feel it was particularly far ahead of its first-growth peers in this tasting. I found the 2006 Château Latour which was perfumed and aromatically charming, but ultimately impenetrable on the palate. This is a wine with majestic potential, crying out to be left in the cellar for at least another five years, maybe longer, whereas the 2006 Château Mouton-Rothschild seems a little more accessible now, majoring more on charm than pure grip. Like the Latour, however, it is still a wine I would leave in the cellar for now.
