Mature and maturing bordeaux week

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I'm currrently trying to juggle appointments and tastings all over the left and right banks in the Gironde at the end of this month. As a run up to my tastings of the much-heralded 2009 vintage (see the extensive Blatch report), we offer you a week of tasting notes on mature and maturing bordeaux, knowing how many of you are keen to know how the bottles you own are coming on.

After all, the point of serious (for which read expensive) bordeaux is that it demands to be aged – and represents value only if it is allowed to spend many years in bottle accumulating the sort of complexity and subtlety of which it is capable.

This serves as a signpost to our coverage this week, based on tastings and dinners both private and professional over the last few years in some cases.

Iconic bordeaux with Bill Nov 2008

Latour and Pétrus Nov 2005

Namedropping notebooks Dec 2007-Jul 2008

Sixty years of Ch Figeac Dec 2007

Haut-Brion and La Mission Feb 2010