The BBR HK Team was fortunate enough to attend the Robert Parker tasting at Wine Futures last Tuesday (amazingly most of our rivals did not bother!). As well as being able to taste alongside the great man, this reaffirmed just how spectacular the 2009 vintage is. All of his “Magic 20” showed superbly in one way or another – and cemented the greatness of this vintage. We were fortunate enough to have our Fine Wine Director, Simon Staples, present and he has written an intro and his brief notes on the “Magic 20”. Please note that due to the special nature of this Event, demand picked up dramatically for these wines, so please be sharp, in order to secure the stock you want.

You may very well receive numerous emails like this over the next few days, for that I apologize, but I was very fortunate to have been invited and it was amazing and I need to tell someone about it!
It was the first time I had ever seen Robert Parker in action and I have to say I was bowled over. He was professional, passionate, authoritative but above all humble. I was somewhat star-struck, truth be told, as was the rest of the captivated audience.

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I generally prefer my Friday nights tucked at home with Sarah, my wife, with a decent bottle, my legendary chorizo chilli pasta (sadly I am the only person that calls it so) and a couple of episodes of the West Wing or Boardwalk Empire. Well my security blanky was firmly torn asunder last night as I rather bizarrely found myself in downtown Shanghai at the global launch of our partners, Vertu, and their eagerly awaited new wunder-phone The Constellation. A touch screen marvel and I have to say a thing of real beauty.

We were not sure what to expect of the evening but I was promised we wouldn’t be idle and our eyebrows should be raised by close of play. They weren’t wrong!

As we struggled through Shanghai’s teeming Friday evening traffic and headed towards the famous Bund and it’s incredible light show all eyes were drawn away to the dozen or so enormous tracer lights further up stream that cut into the overcast and starless sky. Looking like a scene from the Oscars, could this possibly be our destination? As we turned into several banks of officious security guards it seemed apparent it was. We asked our jovial taxi driver to pull over his 30 year old, battled scarred Ford Cortina so we could stroll over rather the last few hundred yards rather than arrive as four crumpled messes in a cloud of CO2. We eased ourselves out rather looking like four clowns emerging from their clown mobile under the big top. This evening’s Motley BBR Crüe consisted of the ever whimsical and dapper Dan, Adam Bilbey, our Hong Kong sales manger, Geordie Willis our Hong Kong PR and Marketing genial guru, Rufus Beazley our Shanghai head honcho and secret weapon, angelic Anglo looks, Caesar buffont and fabulously fluent in Mandarin. The team was topped off by our Hong Kong Chairman and all round bon viveur K.K Mui.

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 Now we have all the cards on the table…let the games commence!
 
Ok so what do we know?
 
1. We LOVE  2010  Bordeaux (reds only really. The dry whites are a tad too puppy-fatty and the sweeties are just not that exciting, as general rule of thumb.) As a vintage 2010 is on a par with 2005 and, across the board, better; it’s more defined and more exciting than 2009 and the quality level goes far deeper and further down the hierarchy than last year. In the whole panoply of greatest vintages, 2010 is up there and proud. In my opinion it can hold its own with 2005, 1982 and 1961 (below). I have very little experience with fabled vintages like 1947, 1945, 1928, 1929 and 1900 but you have to believe with the care that is taken now, in the vineyards and Chais, and the technology that’s available now, these modern wines have to be at least as good, if not better.

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After the hype and chaos that was Bordeaux 2009, it seems quite incredible to think that yet another great vintage may be on our doorstep. As my colleague Max writes in his blog, all the early indications are that this vintage is very special – but I will be heading down to Bordeaux on Sunday to find out for myself.

Meanwhile, I see the annual fun and games have started already. As reported by Decanter.com yesterday, French wine critic Michel Bettane is threatening to boycott the primeurs unless ‘other’ critics are told to hold back on their scores before the main tastings. But one less body in Bordeaux next week won’t be a bad thing at all to be honest. We shall miss him. Consumers are a savvy bunch and they will wait until all the critics and dare I say it, even the little wine merchants, have their opinions in. They will triangulate their favourites, make their minds up and then sit back and watch the never ending tumbleweed of indecision as we all wait for the prices to be released.

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Despite the French strikers’ best intentions to keep me out, I made it to Bordeaux eventually to visit some great châteaux and have the first taste of new juice with a handful of our international customers last week.

Highlights of the week included watching the harvest come in, tasting the juice and hearing what the châteaux owners are predicting for Bordeaux 2010.

It was only the second year I have ever been asked to taste the new juice and we tasted 2010 from Palmer, Ducru, Cos, du Tertre and Giscours. Our customers, who are not used to tasting wine at this early stage, were blown away by the quality and richness and the enthusiasm of the châteaux owners was infectious and certainly rubbed off on them.

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It’s been the most hectic, frantic and let’s face facts, bonkers three weeks of my 22 years in the wine business. Seventeen hours-a-day of what seemed like stratospheric prices that we shouldn’t buy at one minute, that then sell out in an hour…….I’ve never seen anything like it.
 
So is this insanity that’s all going to go belly up or is this a new world order for top wines and are these prices really here to stay? 
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Every year the time between when we taste the wines and when we get the prices to sell them to you seems to get longer and longer. I just wanted to express how I understand your frustrations with the ludicrous and seemingly pointless nature of this delay. I have to say this is the most ridiculous way for any product to get to “market”. We tasted these great wines at the end of March, we told you about their various merits the 2nd week of April. Ok, so then we have to wait for good old Parker to release his edict, marvel at the stunned awe etc. etc., but that was the end of April…….it’s June 14th!

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The mighty Parker has released his scores for Bordeaux’s 2009s – possibly the most important document in wine history since the 1855 classification – and guess what? He actually seems to agree with us! Many have been the years where we have read through Parker’s proclamations with a sense of bewildered wonderment – 2003/2005/2008 for example.
 
Well, this year he seems to have seen the light and hasn’t, like many, declared 2009 the best vintage in living history, but has sensibly informed the wine world that, although many chateaux have made the best wines in memory, it is not a blanket vintage and many wines are too alcoholic and lack definition.

However, as we have always maintained, Parker, although a great critic and undoubtedly one of the most influential men of our times, is simply one man.  One man who’s opinion affects an entire industry, so when he gives the brilliant 09 Ch. Latour 98-100 points but, in the next breath, awards the same status to certain Right Bank wines which were, in our (team’s!) opinion, over-extracted, over-alcoholic and stand-your-spoon-up-in-them thick, we can’t help but wonder whether being all things to all men is simply not a sensible tactic (the wines we are talking about shall remain nameless). The sad fact is that most people don’t read Parker’s notes, they just care about the score, so if they enjoy the classy, subtle elegance of Ch. Latour and then decide to try another of his more “exotic” 100-pointers, they are bound to be disappointed, and vice versa of course. To me it would seem very helpful to the reader that he identifies the “pea soupers” (PS?) as Modern Style (MS) perhaps. Anyway, enough rambling on, the report will only add fuel to the 2009 fire. Message to Chateaux….Come on ….let’s get on with it!

I caught up with world famous wine writer Jancis Robinson MW for our, now traditional, chat about the release of the new Bordeaux vintage.

Find out about Jancis’ top three value tips for Bordeaux 2009, which was the best wine I have ever tasted en primeur and what wines I plan to buy. Also hear more on what effect social media is having on this year’s campaign.

For  more information about Bordeaux 2009, including a full list of tasting notes and how to sign up to receive email alerts, visit bbr.com

After a glorious weekend recovering from what I have to say was a completely exhausting week in Bordeaux (and several bottles of reviving Burgundy to aid the process), I can sit down now and actually format in my mind what we experienced and after assimilating that, what’s going to happen next.

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Having just returned from a break-neck few days in Bordeaux with our buyer, Max Lalondrelle, our early thoughts on the vintage are… .that we really can’t say for sure! Dull, I know, but we only tried a handful of finished wines and only twice that amount in barrel samples – and that’s just not broad enough to hang a “Greatest ” tag on…just yet!

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I was invited to the brilliant gastro-pub, The Wellington Arms,  in deepest darkest Basingstoke a couple of nights ago by a bon viveur of a client. Sadly, as I’m not the most well organised person, I’d left it too late in the day to plunder my own cellar (housed here rather than home, as the temptation is too great!) so I had to make a hasty stop in the shop to pick out a bottle of something modest and appropriate.

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Just back from a glorious two weeks away and I thought I’d share a true find.

We drove, taking the great overnight Brittany Ferry crossing from Portsmouth to St Malo (a marvelous meal, a movie in one of four cinemas and a great and spacious Commadore Cabin), five hours to Bordeaux and then a very gentle three hour drive to San Sebastian for a bite of lunch then 10 days reading and relaxing by a pool in Spain and back the same way. Marvellous!!

As much as Bordeaux City as been reinvigorated over the last decade, and it’s really beautiful again now, driving in and out is a nightmare and really should never be attempted during rush hour (a bit of an unquantifiable time frame anywhere in France, let alone this cosmopolitan metropolis….but let’s just say 07.30 to 10.00 and 15.30 to 18.30).

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I was brought up on Rioja, holidaying on the Costa Blanca every year.  My father would spend hours in the local bodegas truffling through their seemingly inexhaustible range of old Reservas and Gran Reservas.  Bringing back wines from the ’40s to ’60s for what seemed only a few hundred pesetas and trying to educate me on their merits and nuances.  Oh and not forgetting how well they went with fresh crunchy bread, manchego cheese, roasted red peppers and garlic and wafer thin slices of Serrano ham. Now, don’t get me wrong, he was right and I really enjoyed that style of Rioja; light, elegant, creamy, oaky but it did (and still does in many Bodegas) lack fruit and I have tended to shy away from them for many years. UNTIL…

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And so the En Primeur Season draws to a close and what a strange and bizarre campaign it all was. Who would have thought Latour would open proceedings?
 
Who’d have thought we’d sell the luckiest number in China’s worth of Ch. d’Angludet….888 cases! Still a damned fine case at £150 if you haven’t bought yours yet!
 
Who’d have thought the Chateaux would keep a lid on prices (well, until that lid was whipped off and the rabid badgers were unleashed onto the World with the release of Mr Parker’s scores that is).
 
Even I got swept up in it and ended up buying 21 cases when I promised myself, and far more importantly, Mrs Staples, that I was only going to buy seven! Uh oh.
 
So I’m delighted it’s nearing its end and encouraged with what I’m hearing from our chums down there that, at the moment, things are shaping up rather nicely for 2009. I’m driving down through Bordeaux, en route to Spain, on Friday and will report back with any findings.

Hope you’re having a lovely Summer!

I was utterly bewildered when I sat down to see Robert Parker’s scores the other night!  If you’ve been following our progress in Bordeaux then you will know that we were genuinely surprised by the ’08s – some of the wines we tasted were excellent and many surpassed our expectations.  But the blunt fact of the matter is that, on the whole, this vintage was not legendary, exceptional or outstanding – it is simply surprising.  Yes, there were some gems, but it was patchy; the now infamous weather during the vintage has still left its mark, and only those with nerves of steel, who risked everything on cutting back their crops and waiting for those last days of Autumn sunshine were rewarded with remarkable wines, and few would deny that.  The success of the campaign relied on the chateaux getting the prices right and it’s been encouraging to see that those who have released their prices, for the most part, have been sensible.

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Bordeaux 2008 is, quite frankly, a vintage that has taken most of us by surprise.  Who would have thought that after months of continuous bad weather and set-backs in the vineyards, and weeks of speculation about the quality of the wines, that we would actually come away with anything better than mediocre praise for these specimens?  But there’s no denying that many of the wines surpassed our expectations (though it must be said that many didn’t).  Either way, it is certainly a unique vintage, and I caught up with Jancis Robinson MW for our annual En Primeur review (this time on video!) to discuss the highs and the lows.  Jancis tells me that she was surprised and delighted from the outset and talks about how many of these refreshing wines will be ‘an agreeable shock’ to those who had doubted the vintage.

Watch the video here to see our views on what Jancis describes as ‘a vintage like no other’.

If you would like to receive up-to-the-minute reports of the 2008 releases then follow Simon Staples on . Sign up now, it only takes a few seconds and it’s free.

A week on from tasting almost 400 wines and having many heated discussions with négociants and châteaux owners I feel fairly upbeat about Bordeaux 2008 as the prices start to come out.

From a qualitative level 2008 is a mixed bag. It’s not a Right Bank or a Left Bank year, nor a Cabernet or Merlot vintage. It all has come down to which châteaux had the nerve and skill to let their grapes sit on the vine longer and absorb all that wonderful Indian summer sun. This, combined with huge attention to detail and their rigorous selection at all stages.

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When you have been doing this for as long as I have, to find a brand new wine that blows your socks off is a rare event but to find an entire region that does that not only in red but white, it’s almost like finding another limb you didn’t know you had. It’s brilliant! Now I’m not professing I’ve discovered a new winemaking country or a spectacular new grape variety that rivals Pinot or Cabernet or anything, I’ve just had my eyes de-blinkered to the oldest wine making area France has… its only taken 20 years!!

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I’m not sure how many of you saw the BBC Documentary on us last night but for many of us at BBR it was the first time we had ever seen it!

Over the course of almost 18 months we must have been filmed for approximately 40/50 hours each, all of which had to be condensed into an hour, which was very unsettling as we just didn’t know what to expect. 

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