Bordeaux 2009 at Two Years: Pessac-Léognan
Each year, when the UGC circus roles into town, they bring approximately 120 wines with them. I must confess, this is something of an estimate, as I’ve never bothered to count. It no doubt varies a little year from year, as the UGC membership may change (more of that under my Pauillac report) or for whatever reason a château may simply not be able to send a representative one year, but I will settle on 120 wines as a realistic and representative figure. It is a one-day tasting event, and for some reason it only fills six hours of the day, this year beginning at 10am and finishing up at 4pm sharp. Entry at the start of the day is strictly controlled (there is no way of slipping in early, unnoticed – believe me, I’ve tried) and the end of tasting is enforced by the staff at Covent Garden, where the tasting is held. There may be ten or fifteen minutes of ‘extra time’ between official close of tasting and all the bottles having been packed away, but then that’s it. Finished. Go home.
And so that gives us all six hours to taste. I think this is worth bearing in mind when you read reports from critics made on one-day tastings such as this (not just this one, but any tasting). How many wines in a day? How many hours? Because if the critic in question purports to have tasted everything at this tasting, then at a rate of 20 wines per hour (based on my 120-wine estimate) that means each wine received just three minutes of the critic’s time. That three minutes includes finding and pouring the wine, sipping and spitting, and scribbling or typing time. And of course, it’s only three minutes per wine if we skip lunch of course. A saunter upstairs mid-tasting for a leisurely bite to eat, with a complimentary glass or two of Bordeaux to wash it all down, soon erodes into our precious tasting time.
