Bordeaux Blend

A slumbering giant awakens in the Médoc On the great wine trails of France, June makes for quantity, August for style, and September for quality. During the 2000 growing season in Bordeaux, August was glorious, and September featured day after day of turquoise skies and a couple intense heat spikes. As usual, Robert Parker recognized…

First-Rate “Second Label” from Saint-Julien In the spring of 2001, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate published a vintage report that would rock the wine world. As Parker wrote, Bordeaux’s spring of 2000 couldn’t have been less auspicious. One of the worst outbreaks of mildew in memory caused château owners to double up efforts in the vines….

Château Pontet-Canet is one of the few Bordeaux estates that is a legitimate rival to the First Growths, and their open, complex 2004 release is bottled proof: With leather, tobacco, dried violet, and truffle tertiary aromas spilling from the glass, the 2004 is lighter than other vintages from this esteemed property, but just as deep…

Château Pontet-Canet is one of the few Bordeaux estates that is a legitimate rival to the First Growths, and their open, complex 2004 release is bottled proof: With leather, tobacco, dried violet, and truffle tertiary aromas spilling from the glass, the 2004 is lighter than other vintages from this esteemed property, but just as deep…

The Wine That Seduced Château Pavie How often do you get to open perfectly cellared, magnificently aged, 11-year-old Right Bank Bordeaux? At $37.99, this is without a doubt one of the best values we’ve tasted this year. Why? The 2006 Château Clos l’Eglise Côtes de Castillon is one of the last vintages of the wine…

A 96pt Bargain of Epic Proportion: Parker’s “Dazzling” 2009 Branaire-Ducru As the curtain quickly drops on the 2009 vintage in Bordeaux, and the last cases of that harvest’s 96- to 100-point wines disappear from the cellars where they were bottled, it’s time for a last look at the highest-rated vintage in the history of the…

Pomerol Par Excellence: 2009 Château La Conseillante By now, nearly all of the voluptuous 2009s from Bordeaux’s Right and Left Banks have long disappeared, but we keep trying to turn them up, anyway. Here’s why. The vintage report that Robert Parker published on April 26, 2010, reverberated around the wine world like a neutron bomb….

After spending a week on Bordeaux’s Left and Right Banks last year, tasting 127 barrel samples from the 2014 vintage, there was quite a bit of talk about the sudden spike in price of the 2009s. Drawn from a warm, dry, near perfect growing season that Parker compared to the monumental 1899, 1929, 1949, and…

2009 Château Poujeaux: Robert Parker’s “Finest Wine in 33 Years” Never in Bordeaux history had a single vintage so ignited world markets before 2009. Chinese speculators arrived in force to the en primeur tasting a few months after harvest. The late, great Denis Dubourdieu stepped to the microphone in front of an audience of 300…

A Rare 2009 of True Pedigree — Direct from the Château In 1946, the Belgian wine merchant Georges Thienpont emigrated to France and purchased two Right Bank properties in the Côtes de Francs — the famous Vieux Château-Certan in Pomerol and Château Puygueraud (pronounced pwee-gair-oh). That was just the beginning. Today, members of the Thienpont…