By Charles Lea on 25/04/2012
Out this morning is our perennial value buy Les Ormes de Pez, produced by the same team as Lynch Bages and consistently punching above its Cru Bourgeois status - buy this and not Chasse Spleen, please. As I say every year, stick it away in magnums for dinner parties or weddings or whatever in ten+ years time.
By Charles Lea on 24/04/2012
Sociando Mallet coming out this morning, critically at a price below any other vintage on the market. This afternoon we have Chasse Speen, normally a popular primeur buy, but it is barely below the price of the 2010.
By Charles Lea on 18/04/2012
Today sees the release of Château Cos d'Estournel and Pagodes, it's second wine, Goulée, the Médoc made by the Cos team, as well as the Pomerol, Château Gazin. Jean-Guillaume Prats has made a substantial effort on the price of Cos, which is down from €190 last year to €108 - to UK merchants.
By Charles Lea on 16/04/2012
Bordeaux 2011 - around a £tenner, and one a bit more Below is a short list of wines selected from those so far on the market which seem to me to offer the 'no-brainer' bit of this (and any other) vintage.
By Charles Lea on 13/04/2012
Pierre Taïx of La Mauriane in Puisseguin Saint Emilion told us that after the rain at the end of August the vines started to grow again, and that this growth resulted in dry sap tannins in the grapes. Harvest had to be left for at least another ten days for the tannins to polymerize and the grapes re-concentrate.
By Charles Lea on 12/04/2012
For once I think it really helps an understanding of the weather to understand the variation and style of the wines of Bordeaux in 2011 - although nothing is ever completely deterministic and odd surprises still exist. The story of the the 2011 harvest began with the dry Indian summer of 2010, which stayed fine long after this fine harvest was in the cellars.
By Patrick Sandeman on 12/04/2012
I made this simple Vin de France wine of the week after glugging almost an entire bottle of it on my own one evening this week! One of Charles' new finds in the Rhône valley, from a relatively unknown and very small producer in Châteaneuf (although they do make it into Bob Parker's Wine Advocate), 'Le Petit Roy' is simply a Vin de France because it is made up of eveything that does not make it into the Châteaneuf cuvées, and as such carries no vintage on the label, only '11eme année' which is a clue I guess.
By Charles Lea on 10/04/2012
Tricky vintage. Singed or scorched (cramé or échaudé, take your pick) grapes. Rotten grapes. Grapes which had failed to turn colour properly. All needed to be sorted out. In Bordeaux there has been much experimentation with sorting in different ways, and all the properties do it - to a greater or lesser extent.
By Charles Lea on 10/04/2012
Selection, Selection, Selection, seems to be the new mantra on Bordeaux in recent vintages, not only in terms of grapes before the fermentations, but also in terms of the wines that 'make the grade' into each of the different cuvées that the property produces.
By Charles Lea on 10/04/2012
2011 Bordeaux en primeur Dense and concentrated with flashes of brilliance In 2009 and 2010 it was difficult not to make great wine. In 2011 it was less straightforward. Location mattered, both in terms of the localised weather events, especially hail, but also in terms of the ground the vines were growing in.