For the Future - 10 Years .....................................................................................................................................................................................................

There is still a good choice of wines which can be kept for this length of time. It may well be worth considering some earlier-drinking Bordeaux châteaux, particularly if there is a current En Primeur offer. Burgundy, especially red, particularly from 1er and Grand Cru sites, is often forgotten when it comes to laying down but a mature Charmes-Chambertin, for instance, at 10 years old has the potential to reveal all that is best in this sort of wine. The intense, lingering pleasure to be derived from a 10 year old German Riesling Auslese or even Spätlese needs to be tasted to be believed.

Niepoort Vintage Port, 1997 - £36.39 per bottle "Niepoort is to vintage Port what Krug is to Champagne. They are both small houses in a world dominated by large competitors, but they are producing outstanding wines that very few can match." - James Suckling, Wine Spectator. Established in 1842, Niepoort is now run by the 5th generation and produces wines of world class status. For their vintage ports, grapes are sourced from four vineyards around the Pinhão region where the very old vines (85 plus years) provide extremely low yields of five or six hectoliters per hectare. The grapes are treated traditionally, foot trodden in lagares thus achieving lots of colour and fine tannins. 1997 was an ideal growing year. There was plenty of rain in April and May and the spring was not excessively hot so the stage was set. The summer was hot and generally dry with temperatures reaching 40°C in August and September but some very welcome rain fell on 24th and 27th August which refreshed the grapes and gave them a great boost. When picking began in late September, this rain and ripening meant that the grapes were coming into the wineries in pristine condition with lots of fruit sugar evident. Also, importantly, the weather was dry, meaning that there was no dilution and the resulting musts were fragrant, intense and enormously concentrated with huge amounts of colour. Dirk Niepoort is the current custodian of this house and his aim is to make intense, profound, complex ports which need a good ten to fifteen years before they are completely understandable. DIGESTIF ..................................................................................................................................................................

Château Bourgneuf-Vayron, 2000 - Pomerol - £30.49 per bottle A classic Pomerol full of plummy chocolatey fruit.The 2000 is an absolute gem of a wine with flavours of dark chocolate and coffee with hints of damson on the palatte. Notes of tar, earthy black fruits and oak. This wine, although it can even be enjoyed now, will repay careful cellaring over the next 10 to 20 years. This Château has been a great personal favourite of ours since we started out in business in the late 1970’s but, until recently, we had not been able to buy enough wine to warrant listing it. Xavier and Dominique Vayron own 9 hectares of a single vineyard plot on the plateau west of Trotanoy and consistently produce a very substantial Pomerol which tends to have a distinctive whiff of chocolate truffles on the nose and a textured rich fruitiness and a powerful, structured body. They are a “class act”. BEEF/GAME/CHEESE ..................................................................................................................................................................