By Rob Pickard
Last year I sat here and wrote about the stellar vintage of 2009, with the Burgundy growers making their annual pilgrimage to the UK on the back of a fantastic year for all involved. Weather wise it was pretty much perfect, ideal conditions throughout the year had created superb quality drinking across the board, with hugely fruit driven, …
by Gareth Groves
There’s been one main hot topic of conversation today: the name of Alex’s soon-to-be-born baby. With a surname like Marton the options are clearly limited. The current favourite option is Anthony Leoville Marton. Daddy is secretly hoping it might get us an extra big allocation.
Apart from Marton Jr, we’ve been talking about the weather …
by Gareth Groves
The first wine of en primeur week is always the toughest. Without reference to its peers, without some sort of context, it is very hard to rate what is in the glass. Usually we kick off at a First Growth – all good fun but hardly the most representative of the vintage as a while – but this …
After the hustle and bustle of the rest of the week, Thursday was pretty light. We had just four appointments, three with chateaux and one with Easyjet. This was the home stretch. We began at Haut Brion in the dark. Our appointment was for a rather early 8am but fuelled by the fear of getting lost in the back streets of Pessac (we …
By Gareth Groves
Hidden amongst the back streets of Pauillac
There is nothing like a minor hit and run accident to get things going in the morning. After a late night discussing Scandinavian monopoly markets with the Bibendum Europe team, we were behind from the word go on Wednesday.
Breakfast was …
By Gareth Groves
We have tasted some superb wines today – but also less than stellar numbers. After a near perfect hit rate amongst the big guns of the left bank yesterday, we have found a bit more inconsistency in St Emilion and Pomerol. The highs on the right bank are still very high indeed, but further down the scale you have …
Bordeaux 2009 Cos d'Estornel
You will probably have gathered by now that Bordeaux made some good wines last year. Some very good wines indeed. Today was our first day of proper tasting and after 60 or so wines we have tasted only a handful of duffers. The general quality is excellent. At the top level …
If you are sitting comfortably, then I’ll begin.
Although you will probably have heard this story before: a new vintage from Bordeaux is about to be released and everyone from the chateaux owners to us, the merchants, claim it is the greatest thing since grapes were first grown. The hype machine is wheeled out, oiled down and cranked up, and the …
It was back to RIBA on Tuesday Night for our Burgundy 2008 tasting. As usual the crowds poured in early and the place was buzzing well before the official 6pm opening time. We showed over 80 wines from 21 growers – most of whom were on hand to talk tasters through the wines and the vintage. Luckily for those of you who couldn’t make it, our intrepid reporter Gal was out about with the Flip …
(Blues skies over Le Montrachet – a good way to start the day)
Today started where we last night left off: with widespread incredulity at Camilla’s prior career at the sharp end of the fast food industry (see below!). Finding ourselves with twenty minutes to kill before our first appointment, Ben suggested we head into Meursault for an Egg McMuffin and a cafe crème at …
