John Earle and I set out on our trip to taste and review the 2009 Burgundy vintage on Sunday, 28th November last year. These are critical visits as it is through these extensive tastings at each of our principal domaines that we put together our thoughts and tasting notes for such offers as this. By 7.00pm on that Sunday, whilst transferring to the TGV at Charles de Gaulle airport, our plans were completely annihilated when my brief case, containing my passport, wallet, credit cards, phone etc. etc., was stolen from our baggage trolley. The result was that we had to spend the next 48 hours in Paris, waiting for the British Embassy to organise a new passport and trying to replace some of the other stolen possessions. We had no choice but to abandon our trip down to the Côte d’Or. Rather than delay our offer of the undoubtedly very fine 2009 Burgundies, we have decided to make an ‘interim’ selection of all the key wines from our family of growers. We will be publishing full tasting notes in March when we will hopefully have a less eventful trip to visit these domaines! In the meantime, you can be assured that in all cases, these are wine-makers who we have been working with for many years and have every confidence that their 2009’s will continue in the same vein as previous vintages.

A link to the Burgundy Interim Offer is on the Home page of our Website

John Earle was aaked to give his impressions of the 2009 Bordeaux vintage whilst tasting at Chateau Dauzac.

A large amount of the wines we selected for our 2009 En Primeur offer have just been picked by Decanter Magazine (Nov issue) as great value Bordeuax wines under £25. We still have some left so don’t miss out on this outstanding vintage.

Chris Piper & John Earle visited Bordeaux in March 2009 to taste the En Primeur 2009 wines; highlights of their comments are as follows:

Right Bank tastings have revealed wines of unparalleled balance. They combine power and finesse with very high tannins; tannins that are so fine that they are so discreet when tasted, enveloped in an amazing amount of unctuous fruit. The watchword so far is ‘freshness’, despite the fact in a vast amount of cases, these wines have high alcohol levels (+13.5%) which are hardly perceptible.

Summary of the tastings of the Left Bank En Primeurs:

“There have been discussions over the consistency of vintage in the American press, however we feel this is a vintage that is all about how winemakers have handled their Terroir. As we worked our way through the Left Bank wines, two styles clearly emerged.

The first being wines of massive fruit characters with balancing finesse, and the second of a more structured and muscular style, more in a classic vein of Bordeaux.”

All our En Primeurs are highlighted on our Website showing prices and availability.