Bordeaux 2006 vintage a bit of a mix

Bordeaux’s mixed 2006 vintage has turned out ‘better than expected’, according to wine critic Robert Parker, who has just released his notes on the en primeur tastings.

The American, whose scores are highly influential in determining the price of the wines, awarded three potential 100 point scores to Mouton-Rothschild, La Mission Haut Brion and St-Emilion’s Bellevue Mondotte. And this year he has announced his scores two months early, which means chateaux owners know how they’ve been rated before they release their prices.

At wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd, sales director Simon Staples summed up the vintage for ThirtyFifty. ‘Because of the weather, there wasn’t a lot of ripe fruit for many of the chateaux. So it was the chateaux that had the money from previous successful vintages who had the ability to send lots of people out into the vineyard to selectively pick the ripe berries.’

The result, he explained, is a vintage that, ‘is a bit mean, that lacks generosity’. Simon said there were only about 20 chateaux in his view that were really worth buying and that if people wanted to buy, they really needed to do it en primeur to make it affordable.