Bordeaux 2009 – St-Émilion

See our guide to Bordeaux 2009 coverage.

As usual, these wines are all over the place stylistically but, hearteningly, the proportion that are made in overblown caricature style or so extracted that they are physically painful on the finish with seriously drying tannins continues to fall.

In fact there are remarkably few real failures here. And those few I have given a score of less than 15 to would probably be relished by some palates raised on strapping New World wines. Most of these wines were tasted blind, either thanks to the Cercle Rive Droite, or in the UGC right-bank...