by Juel Mahoney
If Bordeaux is like the Hollywood of wine, during En Primeur week, the cellars are the sets. The tanks are shined to a mirror, the barrels are in perfect rows. After tasting the 2012 Chateau Palmer in their dramatic tasting room, Thomas Duroux excitedly whisked us away to show us around the new cellars. As one of the Fine Wine team’s favourite wines, we were …
by Juel Mahoney
After two days, our impressions of the left bank are very mixed. 2012 is not a uniformly good vintage for Pauillac, St-Julien, St-Estephe and Margaux. There are some good to very good wines but there are also some fiercely tannic, extracted and very difficult wines. As Ben Collins said on the way over the bridge to the right bank, …
by Juel Mahoney
We only have one CD in the car as we drive around the superstar chateaux on the left bank of Bordeaux: The Best of Rod Stewart. “It was only £2.50,” said Ben Collins, unwrapping it from its plastic, “No wonder went HMV bust.” We wondered how he could have paid so much – much as we wondered …
by Juel Mahoney
Some people play politics, some play football. Then there are people who visit a windowless concrete cellar and taste hundreds of wines in what looks like a nuclear bunker. They play the game of Bordeaux En Primeur.
This is how we spent yesterday.
Unlike the day before, where we visited superstar Chateaux complete with moats to …
by Juel Mahoney, Our Woman in Pauillac
Sitting at a superb lunch with our Bordeaux negociant in St Julien talking about possible pricing for 2011 Bordeaux we had a glass of 2004 Phelan Segur. Not the best vintage in the world for Bordeaux, a four-square wine which does not shout over the conversation with fruit and oak madness. Yet …
By Juel Mahoney
The En Primeur season is about to start and Bibendum’s Fine Wine team will join the rest of the international wine trade to taste the Bordeaux 2011 vintage for a week….
Of The Greatest Wine Region In The World.
Yes, there is a tendency towards superlatives when it comes to Bordeaux.
The greatest, the best, the grandest. Bordeaux is a region of celebrity wines. Star-studded …
by Gareth Groves
Good food would choose Bordeaux. Or so the current marketing campaign for the region’s wines would have you believe. To help prove the link between Bordeaux and fine grub, Bordeaux Wines organised a masterchef style cooking competition for members of the trade and press.
The competition was hotly contested. Two heats of six teams were whittled down to six …
By Juel Mahoney
What’s the collective noun for a group of barons?
That was my first question entering a room filled with Château Pichon Longueville Baron. There’s no other way to describe it – the whole room smelled… expensive.
Take the classic characters of Pauillac and multiply it by ten: cigar box, blackcurrant and cedar. It is an old Bentley of a wine …
By Jenn Sasiadek (with commentary from Ben Collins)
Bibendum’s very own Fine Wine Director, Ben Collins recently held one of his legendary Bring Your Own ‘no tat allowed’ wine dinners. The event was held in the elegant art deco surroundings of Le Café Anglais in London’s Porchester gardens.
The concept is simple: bring a bottle (or few) of top notch wine and taste over …
Hmmm… a wine of the week that hasn’t even been bottled, isn’t on sale yet and won’t be seen in the UK for at least another two years. Such is the peculiarity and ridiculousness of the en primeur system….
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