How are France's 2008s now?

You may remember that one of my August rituals is a fine-wine tasting organised by my neighbour in the Languedoc, Graham Nutter of Ch St-Jacques d’Albas in Minervois. Over the years we have enjoyed all sorts of geographical and producer themes (put Nutter in our search box to find them) but this year for the first time, he organised a horizontal tasting, a collection of French wines from the same vintage, 2008. (You can read our various reports on the year in this bit of our Learn section.)

The choice of year was inspired by Nutter’s...