Bordeaux En Primeur 2009 Final Day: St-Émilion & Pomerol
Friday, April 30th, 2010
Cheval Blanc
Our final day in Bordeaux started off with a pretty poor excuse for a croissant and a cup coffee more suited to a roadside service station – just the thing to bring us down to earth after the d’Yquem launch.
Fortunately things climbed rapidly upwards from here and an unscheduled visit to Cheval Blanc was next. Here we tasted a trio of stunning St-Émilion’s; La Tour de Pin, Petit Cheval and Cheval Blanc itself, the wines were sublime and Cheval Blanc is going to top a lot of lists for wine of the decade! Dense but sumptuous fruit, multilayered, complex and very silken in texture – amazing wine.
It was then over to Château Beau-Séjour Bécot for the main body of St-Émilion Grand Cru Classés. Here there was a similarity to the Margaux tasting in that the high quality of the vintage was not totally harmonious. Some wines failed to achieve balance but once again the wines that did get it right were quite remarkable. Indeed they were so rich and ripe they seemed almost drinkable then and there!
At opposite ends of the spectrum Pavie-Macquin was luscious, opulent and packed with layer upon layer of ripe fruit whereas Figeac was serious, structured and intense. Choose wisely and St-Émilion will seriously reward in 2009, they will be amazingly open early on but no-one doubts that theses are wines with years of evolution ahead of them.
The Star Wines? Cheval Blanc, Petit Cheval, Pavie-Macquin, Figeac, Beau-Séjour Bécot, Troplong Mondot, Canon.
Staying on the right bank it was Pomerol next and the core tasting was at a Château that unfortunately took the timely decision to treat some part of the tasting room with chemical cleaner in the recent past! So once you struggled past this heady, bleachy aroma quite a bit of concentration was needed to get at the wines. As a counterbalance many of these Pomerols were very open and aromatic.
It is obvious that there are a few weaker links with the Right Bank Merlots but many Châteaux have produced stunning wines. At the top end of the scale La Conseillante stood out, a pillar of structure and reserved power, velvet texture but what richness, what concentration! This is a keeper that will evolve for decades.In its company and equally compelling was Chateau Clinet, pitch perfect Pomerol, very plush ripe fruit, a rounded feel but with great complexity in the everlasting finish.
The danger area some producers fell into was over-extraction and heavy oak use – point chasing wines that rely more on texture than fruit purity. Having said that, I can see 2009 Pomerols being on many people’s wish lists for years to come.
The Star Wines? La Conseillante, Clinet, Petit-Village, La Pointe, La Croix de Gay.
The ivy-clad Troplong Mondot
Finally we were able to wind-down with a light lunch at Troplong Mondot, typically St. Emilion in style with none of the Medoc’s formailty here, a very relaxed lunch. Seated at long benched tables with hearty pâtés, cold meats and salads alongside the family themselves. A good lunch that showed off the superlative quality of Troplong itself in the guise of the ‘98 and ‘07 vintages, great wines but someway behind the level of their monumental ’09.
There was a warm postprandial feeling of job done (for now );300+ wines tasted, notes written and a plane to catch.
The En Primeur (early purchase) campaign begins now in earnest and anyone who has an interest in obtaining the wines mentioned or indeed any others En Primeur then please drop me an e-mail at dstewart@obrienswines.ie
