Well, what an interesting week. And what have we learnt? Well, 2007 was about as good as it could be given the dreadful growing season up to the end of August. It was never going to be as good as 2005, and for once no one has pretended otherwise. However good the winemaking, vineyard management and technology you simply can’t make truly sublime Claret with a wet, cold summer.

That the best producers did as well as they did was nothing short of miraculous. The very best 2007s are ripe, fruity, seductive and often very elegant wines that will provide gorgeous early drinking and in some cases will age well too.

Nevertheless, 2007 is a very inconsistent vintage. For every good wine in 2007 there are several that make you want to shout Blackadder-style (Series 1) ‘Don’t drink the wiiiiiiiiine!’ The worst 2007s are green, dilute and charmless, or where producers have tried too hard, extremely fruity but with no structure and bitter tannins.

The prize for the best appellations in 2007 goes to Pomerol on the Right Bank and St Julien in the Médoc.

Close behind are a very impressive crop of Pauillacs and the slightly inconsistent but occasionally outstanding St Emilions which provided the top 2 reds in Cheval Blanc and Ausone. Margaux was very up and down, ditto St Estèphe led by the excellent Cos d’Estournel, and Pessac with the very fine Haut Brion and Domaine de Chevalier.

Pessac-Léognan’s dry whites are the best of the lot, while the Sauternes are excellent, just lacking a touch of acidity that would bring them up to the level of the other-worldly 2001s.

There will be wines in 2007 that are stupidly overpriced and should be avoided like a Gironde lamprey in red wine. But you shouldn’t believe the harbingers of doom either – as long as you are looking to drink the wines rather than invest in them, there will definitely be wines worth buying from 2007.

To give you a bit of a helping hand we have posted the team’s top 10 overall, cellar must-haves and best value wines for 2007. BBR’s 2007 offering will be pretty slim so you can be reassured that anything we recommend will be well worth it.

I hope you’ve found the blogs interesting and we’ll all keep our fingers crossed that prices are attractive enough to tempt us all to pick up a few cases from 2007. It would be a shame not to have some of these seductive, fruity, finely balanced wines in your cellar. In the meantime, please have a look at Alun Griffiths MW’s excellent 2007 vintage report along with full tasting notes for all the 2007 wines that will be posted on bbr.com over the coming week.

And don’t forget to listen to all of our Bordeaux 2007 Podcasks featuring exclusive interviews with some of the best names in the world of wine.

I look forward to seeing you same time, same place for the 2008s, so farewell and thanks for all the fish.

Poor old Graves – it’s not a Médoc, it’s not a Right Bank, it feels like a bit of an orphan, unloved and forgotten.

Even with the stylish new Pessac-Léognan name its top estates have been able to use since 1987, the region – with the honourable exception of Haut Brion - has never really caught Claret-lovers’ imagination.

After all, why go for a Pessac when you can have a wine a bottle of evocatively-named Margaux or St Emilion?

Well, for one thing Pessacs can be every bit as good and tend to be much better value too. Excellent wines (especially in the last decade) from estates like Haut Bailly (Above and Veronique of Haut Bailly to right) and Domaine de Chevalier have created a real momentum.

At their best, red Pessacs combine the structure and minerality of the Médoc with the plump richness and sweet textured fruit of the Right Bank. So forget about picking up a famous name this year, adopt a Pessac, and not just for Christmas either.

Our last visit of the week was to one of Pessac’s very best estates, Domaine de Chevalier, known affectionately as Dommy Chev.

The charismatic and clearly perfectionist Olivier Bernard’s (left) attitude to nature and wine, working the soil naturally and respecting the terroir and the vintage, makes him a Burgundian at heart according to Jasper Morris MW, which is praise indeed.

Certainly nowhere outside of Ch. Haut-Brion and Ch. Margaux will you find a better pair of red and white Bordeaux wines.

Domaine de Chevalier’s red is absolutely glorious in 2007. The tannins are higher than in 2005 and the concentration here is close to that of Haut Brion. It has full, spicy blackberry and plum fruit with a gorgeous streak of minerality and an impressive long, pure finish. The previous 3 vintages of Domaine de Chevalier (which we were lucky enough to taste) are well worth a mention too.

The 2006 is very pure and focused but not quite as good as the 2007. The rich, explosive 2004 is probably on a par with 2007, while the fantastic 2005 is even better, reminding us (again) just what a wonderful vintage that was. Apart from yours truly - who has a costly pied à terre in Paris to support along with a glamorous wife, hedonistic lifestyle, not to mention no job - everyone snapped up at least a case of the 2005 red as soon as they left the tasting.

It surprised us too, but the white Domaine de Chevalier was even better than the red. It was one of those moments where you wonder where on earth all the flavour comes from. The white had everything: a phenomenal concentration of pears, pineapple and citrus fruit, balanced but crisp acidity, silky smooth texture and a finish of eyewatering intensity and purity.

Grand Cru White Burgundy? Montrachet, Corton Charlemagne, Chevalier-Montrachet, Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet, Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet – your boys took one hell of a beating. At this stage it is even better than the Haut Brion Blanc, although the Haut Brion has just a smidgen more richness and depth so is likely to overtake it in the next few years.

All in all not a bad end to the week.

As we rambled through St Emilion and Pomerol today we found it increasingly difficult to visit a château without bumping into one of the members of the Thienpont clan. (Left: Nicolas Thienpont)

It must be quite galling to own one of the greatest estates in the world and not even produce the best wine in your own family. One can probably hold off the violins for the moment but such is the lot of Alexandre Thienpont at Vieux Château Certan in Pomerol.

In 2007 he has produced an aromatic VCC (16.25/20) of great finesse and precision, closer in style to Burgundy than Bordeaux. It lacks the density of great vintages of VCC but Alexandre has got it spot on in terms of getting the most out of the vintage and not trying to force the wine to be something it’s not.

He realises that you cannot fight against nature; you can’t make a 2005 if you have a cold, gloomy summer however much green or pink harvesting you do, and however much you chaptalise or use the rarely-mentioned concentrators. So to that end Alexandre’s VCC is a success, and a pleasingly early drinking one at that.

A short leap from Alexandre is cousin Jacques (left) at the small shed of a winery that is Le Pin. It is fair to say that Jacques is cut from slightly different cloth than his quiet, modest cousin; a witty, engaging chap without any airs and graces (for a Bordelais anyway).

Certainly his warm, relaxed welcome belies the fact that he owns one of the finest, most expensive and sought-after wines in the world. It was my first visit to Le Pin and it really is as remarkable as everyone says.

A small house in the middle of the vineyards (right), its downstairs garage is home to 4 or 5 steel cuves, a few barrels and a palette or two of wine. Its simplicity makes most Burgundian estates look like Mouton Rothschild (well almost). You don’t have to ask Jacques how much wine he has made, you can just count the barrels (34 this year, for the record, poor maths notwithstanding).

It was nice to see that the future is in good hands too. His polite, well-mannered (as so many French children seem to be) young son George was working hard helping out with the En Primeur tastings. A request for some more Le Pin from some other visitors was met with a firm, albeit rather high-pitched ‘Il n’y a plus’ (There’s none left). The boy is learning fast.

As for the wine, well, like VCC, 2007 Le Pin is a Burgundy-styled Bordeaux but with the volume turned up. It had a heavenly nose, finely textured tannins, focused cassis and raspberry fruit and a finish of great intensity. An unforgettable experience. Le Pin is one place where you don’t bother asking about pricing. With the tiny quantity produced, however good it is, Le Pin is not really about value for money. It is a wine where, as they say, if you have to ask the price it is probably not for you.

The final stop on our Thienpont world tour (I’m sure there are T-shirts available somewhere) was the much lesser-known St Emilion estates of Larcis-Ducasse  (left) and Pavie-Macquin where another cousin Nicolas Thienpont (top left) is effecting a quiet revolution. We have been real fans of this estate since 2005 and 2007 did not disappoint.Both wines were excellent, and received a very solid 16/20 score.

The Larcis was more feminine with lots of fine, ripe, succulent fruit, while the Pavie-Macquin was very refined too but richer and more structured. Both should be very good value buys this year.

Cutting right to the chase (not one of my strong points), no, 2007 is not a Right Bank vintage. It is a vintage where those who worked with the cards that nature dealt them rather than trying to make a silky fruit bomb purse (or Perse, perhaps) out of a pig’s ear, made good wines.

A year where those who had the resources to invest in the vineyards during the growing season, green harvesting, pink harvesting and reducing yields to make sure only the best grapes made it into the wine, succeeded. 2007 is an inconsistent vintage – albeit one that is delicious at its best - that is all about mentality and approach not about whether your estate is situated in the Médoc or St Emilion or Pomerol.

Saying that, if you were to put a gun to my head, there is no denying that on average the Right Bank has probably done better than the Médoc. Pomerol is the most consistently high quality commune in Bordeaux. St Emilion is slightly less consistent but when its good it’s very very good. Ch. Ausone (18.5/20), Cheval Blanc (19/20) and Pétrus (18.5/20) are all better than any of the First Growths of the Medoc.

2007 is a great Cheval Blanc (19/20) in the context of any vintage – an absolute stunner, as The Sun would say, and definitely worthy of a very understandable ‘Phwoooaaarrr’. It has more complexity, power and depth than any other wine in this vintage as well as the fruit, tannin and acidity to last for decades. Ch. Conseillante (Jean-Michel Laporte of Ch. La Conseillante right) (17.75/20) is not far behind either. It is a beautiful, velvety, dense and rich with a lovely streak of minerality.

We were split on whether it was better than their excellent 2006; the only solution is probably to conduct comparative tastings as often as possible to help make up our minds…The ‘Médoc of St Emilion’, Ch. Figeac (Eric d’Aramon of Ch. Figeac left) (17/20) continues to improve too, with a finely-structured, aristocratic 2007 full of character.

Where the Right Bank wines are likely to fall down is over pricing; even the better wines from this higher category like Ch. Angélus (16.5/20) and Ch. Troplong-Mondot (15.5) are going to look a bit toppy compared to the Médocs unless they really surprise us with their pricing policy. Conversely though, the Right Bank will also offer some of the best value wines of the vintage, like Alain Vauthier’s (right) Moulin St Georges (16.75) in St Emilion and Feytit Clinet (16/20) in Pomerol.

It is surely a slippery slope when you find yourself enjoying wine before 9am in the morning but if you are going to drink anything before breakfast, it may as well be the wines of Decanter Man of the Year, Christian Moueix (left). Their office reception has the feel of a posh bank (not too far from the truth if you think about it), and they have a secret room where, beckoned by a nod and a wink, their jewel Ch. Lafleur is tasted by a privileged few (disappointingly, not including Your Man in Bordeaux). But despite these tiny criticisms, Christian can be delighted with his 2007s.

From the fruity, stylish Ch. La Fleur Gazin (15/20) right up to the extraordinarily intense and complex La Fleur-Pétrus, he has made some very good wines providing further evidence of how well Pomerol has performed in 2007. His handful of St Emilions are less impressive but he probably isn’t too worried about that in the great scheme of things.

The Bordelais are constantly coming up with weird and wonderful new ways to seduce the senses while you taste the wines at their châteaux.

You have the wine writer graffiti wall at Léoville Poyferré (right) and the incredibly modern and stylish tasting room at Latour where you look out over the vineyards while a large zebra (fortunately in painted form) looks on. The winner, without a shadow of doubt though, is Super-Second Ch. Ducru Beaucaillou (left)

When Bruno Borie took over at Ducru in 2003 his energy and revolutionary vision had an immediate effect and launched Ducru back towards the glories of decades gone by. Everything about Ducru Beaucaillou today is modern and flamboyant, from Bruno himself to his impressively seductive wines. There is undoubtedly substance behind the style, but my goodness it is not everyone’s cup of tea.

The reception room (below left) is full of modern art (or we think that is what it is) with a rabbit and ice cream theme. The tasting room (left) is like a Tube carriage from a very very psychedelic dream.

It is bright orange with shiny copper sliding doors with cut-out leaf and vine motifs. It is hard to avoid the instinct to grab a handle to ensure you don’t fall over when you reach Aldgate East. Not an easy task when you are holding a glass of wine and a copy of the latest Harry Potter novel at the same time.

Ducru has not yet fully completed its renaissance but for those who like a sleek modern style of Claret, it is well on its way. It doesn’t need bells and whistles like this to sell its wine, but as this blog obviously shows, it certainly grabs your attention. So perhaps all publicity is good publicity?

Well, halfway through the En Primeur tasting week and unlike last year when the tannins and acidity were far more brutal, we still have our spirits and teeth enamel.

We also find ourselves in the position of agreeing with Robert Parker’s initial, and rather more upbeat than expected, view of the 2007s that he posted on his website 

He said, ‘the biggest surprise is 2007…lots of mediocre green and vegetal wines, but the top châteaux have made very fruity…very soft, easy to drink and charming wines…the dry whites are superb…sweets promising as well…of course the prices for 2007 should be low, but I doubt that will be the case.’ All of which in our view is fairly spot on.

We still have to properly explore St Emilion and Pomerol so it is hard to say whether 2007 is a Right or Left Bank vintage, but as far as the Médoc goes, Pauillac and St Julien seem to be the most consistently good appellations. Margaux is more variable, as is St Estèphe to a slightly lesser extent.

We are tasting (and in some cases re-tasting) a number of big names in Margaux, Pauillac and Pessac-Léognan over the next couple of days so this is by no means an exhaustive list, but highlights so far have been Mouton-Rothschild, Latour (and Les Forts de Latour), Cos d’Estournel, Branaire-Ducru (of all things), Pichon Baron, Léoville Poyferré and Gruaud Larose, with Rauzan-Ségla, Léoville Barton, Clerc Milon d’Armailhac, Calon-Ségur, Lagrange and Beychevelle not far behind.

The character and quality of the 2007 vintage at this stage seems most reminiscent of 2002 but it’s soft, easy style also reminds us of the 1999s (even if quality is probably better in 2007) as well as the vintage that dare not speak its name, 1997.

The dry whites are possibly the best we have ever seen led at this stage by the outstanding Domaine de Chevalier Blanc. And from what we’ve tasted of Sauternes, the wines have very good richness and concentration even if they don’t quite have the acidity of the wonderful 2001s.

So, lots to be positive about but we can’t help wondering if April is simply too early to see the true potential of these wines. The En Primeur week should arguably take place a month or two later to give the wines time to settle down and put on a bit more weight. It’s not as if many prices come out before June anyway. But that is a can of worms that is best saved for another day!

The three most important factors in this year’s Bordeaux 2007 campaign will be, in order of importance, prices, prices and prices.

Patrick Maroteau (below right) at Ch. Branaire Ducru made the point that price and quality are two separate issues. Having made a pretty exceptional wine in 2007 (17/20 BBR score) he is probably right to feel a bit aggrieved that 2007 is receiving such poor press, but there is no getting away from the fact that unless prices come down significantly there will not be many 2007 En Primeur wines that will be worth buying.

The 2007 vintage is better than many feared, for the best properties anyway, but these are soft, fruity wines for early consumption; something to enjoy while you wait for the 2005s and 2006s to mature. It is certainly not a vintage for speculation so will not be of interest to many of the wine investment customers who bought so much Bordeaux 2005.

It’s not the Bordeaux châteaux’s fault of course that the Pound is so weak against the Euro (1.25 today against 1.48 a year ago) or the dollar, nor that 2007 isn’t another 2005. But it is a huge mistake for them to think that is not their problem; it is absolutely in their interest to help restore Claret lover’s faith in Bordeaux. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, significantly reducing the prices is the only way to do this.

Léoville-Barton’s Antony Barton (left) is, as ever, a voice of reason. Like Maroteau, he shakes his head at the negative reports emerging about the vintage; he readily admits that the 2007s are wines for early drinking, but firmly believes that they are nevertheless ‘good wines’. He sighs that several of his neighbours have told him that they have no intention of reducing their prices.

Doubtless they talked of emerging markets, which is a serious case of self-delusion as the ‘emerging markets’ are just not significant when it comes to En Primeur. Producers seem to be more open to price reductions than they have ever been, but with the strong Euro even a drop of 15-20% would result in wines that in the UK, US and Far East were the same price as the superior 2006s.

The spectre of the 1997 vintage hangs like a dark cloud over the campaign. For those of you too young to remember, 1997 was a year of charming, supple, fruity wines, not unlike the 2007s, that were horribly overpriced. After the successes of 1995 and 1996, and with allocations to protect in the run up to 2000, merchants bought enthusiastically and those that stayed in business, regretted it immensely.

From the other side of the pond, Robert Parker (left) will be publishing his views on Bordeaux 2007 at the end of April, while the Wine Spectator’s scores have already been filtering out. The fact that nothing has scored more than 93 points should certainly serve as a shot across the Bordelais bows.

Also, with today’s announcement by Robert Parker that 2005 is the finest Bordeaux he has tasted in the last 30 years (describing it as ‘out and out fantastic’), Claret lovers will need to be given a compelling reason to pick up a few cases of 2007 En Primeur as opposed to remortgaging their house and buying as much 2005 as they possibly can!

Today Jasper Morris MW and our Fine Wine Sales Director Simon Staples discussed their initial impressions of the vintage and their thoughts on Bordeaux 2007’s St Julien wines.

Listen to these discussions on our Bordeaux 2007 Podcasks.

PS Incidentally, I hope no one electrocuted themselves licking their computer screens following yesterday’s April Fool. Ironically, if your screen tasted slightly dusty, metallic and fruitless, then you would not actually have been far off the taste of some of the poorer quality 2007s!

Today saw us visit two of the behemoths of Pauillac: Ch. Mouton-Rothschild and Ch. Lafite-Rothschild. Originating from the traditional French (Lafite) and flamboyant English (Mouton) branches of the Rothschild family, there has always been a bit of needle between these two great First Growths.

The 2006 vintage was the first year in a very long time that we had preferred Mouton over Lafite. The question was whether this was a temporary blip or a sea-change in the pecking order of the First Growths.

We visited them one after another today, with Ch. Lafite first up. In line with what we had seen at other châteaux, the quality of the second wine, Carruades de Lafite, was disappointing. It did possess a glimpse of that glorious silky, Lafite texture, but it was lightweight and lacked density.

The Grand Vin, Ch. Lafite was very good indeed, but it didn’t bowl us over. The quality bar for the First Growths is incredibly high these days - and rightly so given the prices they charge - and within that frame of reference, the Lafite lacked the concentration and multi-layered complexity that marks out great vintages of this wine. Its unmistakable aethereal fruit and beguiling, lacy texture was straight out of the Lafite copybook - and if this is the main thing you look for then you will love this - but the greedy souls that we are, we just wanted more. We gave it 17/20.

Mouton Rothschild has undergone a velvet revolution in the last few years, and is so much better for it. Managing Director Hervé Berland (left) has orchestrated the renaissance with administrator Philippe Dalhuin (formerly of Branaire Ducru). However, it is nice to see that Mouton has lost none of its idiosyncratic glamour – where else would you be transported by golf carts 150 yards from the reception area to the tasting room?

With the exception of Le Petit Mouton, which continued the trend of unimpressive second wines, the Mouton stable was excellent. They were just so much riper and generous than most other wines we had tasted. D’Armailhac (16/20) was voluptuous and seductive, Clerc Milon (16.5/20) more structured and serious, and Mouton itself was the first wine to really hit the spot this week. It was sensual yet brooding, flamboyant yet elegant. It had all the concentration you could ask for along with firm yet supple tannins and a long creamy cassis finish. We decided it would be churlish to give it less than 18/20.

Who knows what will happen in 2008, but at this stage, as far as the 2007 instalment of the Rothschild rivalry goes, Mouton definitely wins the day.

At Berrys we pride ourselves on pushing back the boundaries of technology wherever we can, so we are delighted to trial a new piece of internet software with this blog. Using the process of techno-osmology you can now taste the wines for yourself by licking the wine names on your screen. Don’t worry if it doesn’t work at first. It often takes several licks for your screen to release the flavours. We’ll try to work on the aromas too for next year.

And if you can’t wait that long…don’t forget to listen to Our First Bordeaux 2007 Podcask which looks at the vintage from a Hong Kong perspective.

Nick Pegna, MD at BB&R in Hong Kong and Jeannie Cho Lee, head of the The Fine Wine School in Hong Kong give their thoughts on the vintage.

It has not been an auspicious start to the 2007 Bordeaux En Primeur tasting week. After a Saturday of glorious sunshine, Berrys’ Buying Team arrived in Bordeaux to cold, driving rain. Certainly there is little evidence of the global warming that was discussed (and slightly worryingly, rather welcomed by some) at the Climate Change and Wine conference in Barcelona in January.

Having arrived a day earlier from a sunny Paris, I had spent the night in Bordeaux at a friend’s house. All had gone very well until I broke his 19th century blind in typically clumsy English fashion (sorry Bernard and Sophie). As we drove through the Médoc the skies were forbiddingly grey with any sunny breaks swiftly replaced by yet more rain. And of course the tasting week was starting on the 1st April. It was all very symbolic.

Berrys’ Buying Team is stronger than ever this year with the welcome return of Wine Director Alun Griffiths MW and a new addition, leading wine journalist and head of the The Fine Wine School in Hong Kong, Jeannie Cho Lee. I would like to think that the views of Berrys’ 8 Bordeaux experts with, well, let’s just say a lot of experience between them, will offer a balanced and well-informed report that will be hard to beat. To add a touch of spice to proceedings we are also being accompanied by a TV crew working on a documentary about wine for the BBC (to be hopefully aired in February 2009). In other words, it is definitely time to remember what our parents taught us, and mind our Ps and Qs.

So, despite the phenomenally strong euro, despite a lousy summer, and even despite the unhelpful pricing of so many Bordeaux châteaux last year, reports from the Bordelais seemed to show an admirable bullishness about their 2007s. Certainly, an early foray by Sales Director Simon Staples and Oliver East a few weeks ago had revealed a handful of surprisingly attractive, soft and succulent wines including 2007 Ch. du Tertre, but this week would be the real acid test. Could 2007 Bordeaux be the sexiest thing to come out of France since Carla Bruni-Sarkozy or would it be more like, err, a piece of lettuce: green, thin and not very fruity?

As we criss-cross Bordeaux this week tasting as many wines as we can from the 2007 vintage, I will be publishing regular reports on this blog (notwithstanding biblical floods, hypothermia and technology meltdowns) along with full tasting notes and as many podcasks as we can manage. I hope you will join us for the ride.