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Bill Blatch: 2009 Bordeaux is Best year of the best decade.
The vintage reports of Bill Blatch on Bordeaux are the most trusted in the business, frank, witty and informed by years of tracking the good bad and ugly in southwest France. He reports to top buyers and wine merchants that the warmth of 2009, wet springs and dry summers made for unprecedented concentration and balance. Blame/credit global warming and shifting air currents over the Atlantic.
Blatch’s headline is plain:The first decade of the 21st century goes out in a blaze of glory
“A decade with no off-vintages – Bordeaux has never experienced that before – even those all-time great decades, the 1920s and the 1840s had a few misses. In this first decade of the new millennium, all have been successful, …each receiving more acclaim than the previous one. That is a total all-time record.”
“And this final one has turned out to be the most concentrated of them all. In 2009, we seem to have reached the extreme limit of Bordeaux concentration”
“In 2009, there were no extremes, just good regular heat at the right times, with everything coming in the right order… As a result, it functioned perfectly, creating sugar levels in the grapes that we have never seen before, together with a build-up of massive but gentle tannins for the reds and a complexity of flavours for the whites…. 2009 is in an altogether gentler, softer, fatter style, something in the ilk of 1970 or 1982.”
Red wines: “The high alcohol levels are of course the main defining feature of the vintage. These are strong powerful wines, stronger than any Châteauneuf-du-Pape and as strong as any Oz Shiraz.”
Tannins: “The tannin levels are extraordinarily high, often registering at well over 100 pts on the IPT scale, sometimes as far as 135, especially on the Médoc Cabernets. This is way more than we have experienced in any previous reported vintage.”
Lifespan: “The 09s seem to have a ‘togetherness’ that will make them at once approachable in their youth but also probably, as for the ‘29s, unexpectedly long-lived. The wines are far too young to be sure of that but certainly that is the impression they give right now. They will be lovely young and certainly lovely old.”
Dry whites: “These are totally different wines from last year. The ‘08s had been steely and citrus flavoured, whereas these ‘09s are fat and rich with a roundness of peachy fruit, as one would expect after such a summer… expect more Sémillon in the final blends.”
Sauternes: “This is indeed a great vintage: The extreme richness is nicely balanced by acidity, with final blends typically at 14° alc, 7 to 9° of residual (sugar) and a refreshing 3.8 or so g/l total acidity. …The aromas are already very interesting, with beautiful complex flavours of all sorts.”
Blatch confirms B-21’s first barrel tastings of 2009’s in France earlier this year. We’ll be back soon reporting from the tranches and posting futures on offer on the website. This is a vintage for the future.
-Chris Sherman, The Blogging Nibbler
1 Comment to Bill Blatch: 2009 Bordeaux is Best year of the best decade.
[...] a special year in Bordeaux. They’ve had a lot of great vintages in Bordeaux lately, causing Bordeaux expert Bill Blatch to call this past decade “The decade of no off-vintages”. Credit what you will for this [...]
May 18, 2010