Here is a young red to remind you exactly where I am this week and what I am doing on your behalf: immersing myself in the produce of the next warm (understatement of the decade?) vintage in Bordeaux after this one. I and my teeth are currently awash with 2003s. See my report next month and detailed tasting notes and ratings on purple pages.
I always say that the most difficult wine of all to sell is AC Bordeaux, because such a vast quantity of it is made and such a high proportion of it really hardly warrants an appellation at all. It must be so difficult to stand out from the crowd and say, "believe me – my few acres of the 100,000 that qualify for AC Bordeaux really are good!". Yet, a superior AC Bordeaux can be some of the finest value that France produces, provided you like the appetising, digestible claret style and aren't really looking for south-eastern French warmth in a bordeaux bottle.
The miraculously consistent 2000 vintage has produced some of the finest bargains among Bordeaux's humbler offerings and this is a seriously good example. In fact when I tasted it first I wrote "good value if less than ten pounds a bottle". I have subsequently found it on Lay & Wheeler's wine list at £8.95, reduced from the £9.95 asked for it last year. I spuspect therefore they have bought quite a quantity of this luscious wine.
This Bordeaux Superieur is made entirely from Merlot grapes grown on near Camiac in the Entre-Deux-Mers where you have to try quite hard to produce red wines of note. This two-hectare plot of keenly-pruned Merlot is dominated by clay and the fruit treated to proper oak elevage, a fifth of it new oak in 2000. It has that minerally undertow to the Merlot that is reminiscent of some lesser Pomerols and, for the moment, no shortage of ripe tannins. And so healthily ripe does it smell that it has something of that velvety texture of 1990 bordeaux. It does not taste as though it should cost three times as much but I have tasted hundreds, possibly thousands, of wines costing twice as much which have given me far less pleasure. Drink this ideally 2005-2008.
It was also available recently at Sherry Lehmann in New York for under $20 a bottle.
I always say that the most difficult wine of all to sell is AC Bordeaux, because such a vast quantity of it is made and such a high proportion of it really hardly warrants an appellation at all. It must be so difficult to stand out from the crowd and say, "believe me – my few acres of the 100,000 that qualify for AC Bordeaux really are good!". Yet, a superior AC Bordeaux can be some of the finest value that France produces, provided you like the appetising, digestible claret style and aren't really looking for south-eastern French warmth in a bordeaux bottle.
The miraculously consistent 2000 vintage has produced some of the finest bargains among Bordeaux's humbler offerings and this is a seriously good example. In fact when I tasted it first I wrote "good value if less than ten pounds a bottle". I have subsequently found it on Lay & Wheeler's wine list at £8.95, reduced from the £9.95 asked for it last year. I spuspect therefore they have bought quite a quantity of this luscious wine.
This Bordeaux Superieur is made entirely from Merlot grapes grown on near Camiac in the Entre-Deux-Mers where you have to try quite hard to produce red wines of note. This two-hectare plot of keenly-pruned Merlot is dominated by clay and the fruit treated to proper oak elevage, a fifth of it new oak in 2000. It has that minerally undertow to the Merlot that is reminiscent of some lesser Pomerols and, for the moment, no shortage of ripe tannins. And so healthily ripe does it smell that it has something of that velvety texture of 1990 bordeaux. It does not taste as though it should cost three times as much but I have tasted hundreds, possibly thousands, of wines costing twice as much which have given me far less pleasure. Drink this ideally 2005-2008.
It was also available recently at Sherry Lehmann in New York for under $20 a bottle.
