Last Monday’s Montrose-athon – 37 vintages back to 1880 over lunch and dinner at Taillevent in Paris (I know, I know) – was marked by some strong, and sometimes highly contentious, comments from the invited English wine authorities. Compared with their English counterparts, American James Suckling of the Wine Spectator and France’s leading wine writer Michel Bettane were positively anodyne – Suckling commenting approvingly on the vintages in the 1980s as heralding in the era of ripe, modern bordeaux while Bettane described their 1950s antithesis, with little new oak and relatively early picking, as “a very favourable era for Montrose”...