Expert summary:
The Médoc second wines of these two highly rated vintages are a safe bet – enjoy the opulent 2009s while your 2010s mature over the coming years
Clearly, these 2009 and 2010 second wines should be a no-brainer for both buying and drinking. and the results suggest that, while it is possible to go wrong, the odds are in your favour.
In the main, the wines did very well, with 14 highly recommended out of 77 wines tasted. It’s a bit disappointing that none sneaked into Outstanding, although echo de lynch-Bages and ségla were both pretty close. there were also no second wines of the first growths included in the line-up.
Not counting the two bottles that were faulty, only three wines didn’t make it to Commended or higher, and the vast majority were extremely good quality. that makes this one of the strongest recent Bordeaux panel tastings we have had outside classified wines, and is a vote of confidence for the vintages.
Most interesting perhaps is that the best wines are fairly evenly matched between both years – although it’s worth noting that the 2009s have a bigger grouping at the bottom of the scale, so even if the best are evenly matched at the higher echelons, the 2010s are perhaps just nudging it in terms of numbers.
Duluc de Branaire-Ducru, sarget de Gruaud larose and ségla deserve a mention here for achieving one wine highly recommended and a second recommended on 89 points. and among the other highly recommendeds, both les hauts du tertre 2010 and Diane de Belgrave 2010 look to be good value, as they can be found for around £20 in the UK, compared to the (also brilliant) Dame de Montrose or echo de lynch-Bages, both of which are about double that price.
at this stage of development, you would expect the 2009s to be ready to go and the 2010s still to be closed for business, and certainly in the main those stylistic differences between the two held up. the 2009s often showed sexy, exotic and beautifully rich fruits (with some straying over into jammy), while the 2010s showed just how intense and concentrated much of the wine was in this year. But both had their charms, and there were very few wines that couldn’t be enjoyed now, in some cases with a short decanting first.
Fleur de Pédesclaux has not done too well in either vintage, but this was before the more recent renovation of the estate and integration of new, higher quality plots had fully come in to effect. you really have to wait until 2012 to see the true improvement in this château – a great example of how vintage alone is not always enough.
‘This is one of the strongest recent Bordeaux panel tastings we have had – a vote of confidence for the vintages’