Grand Vin Wine Merchants UK | Blog

Above: Dom Perignon 2003: a wolf in the forest, a sword in the stone, or just generally brooding 'neath the tree canopy? Wine stimulates more than just taste buds. Its symbolic and aesthetic attributes have long been embraced by priests and the powerful. Great wine is both an escape and an evocation. Champagne houses are not the only wine producers to understand and exploit this power (Bordeaux châteaux are increasingly adopting the techniques of luxury marketing), but they were certainly among the first. The Dom Perignon 2003 tastings in London last week were a fine example of the gloss a ‘luxury’ sensitivity can bring to the dear old UK wine trade, at least. The build up set a tone of exclusivity and mystique. Invitees received personal invitations (no group email) to a timed “1.5 hour experience” with Richard Geoffroy, Chef de Caves and “Creator of Vintages”. Details of the venue and experience would be sent once I had confirmed. How could anyone resist such intrigue? Behind ...

The En Primeur campaign for Bordeaux Vintage 2009 saw high prices, huge demand and praise that ranged from fulsome to hysterical. On the 18 th October 2011 came the opportunity to taste the finished wines at the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux tasting at Covent Garden. Broadly, the wines seem to be fulfilling that early promise. It’s worth considering why they might not. 2009 was not a shoe-in (or, at any rate, less of a shoe-in than 2005). The blissful and long summer dominates the memory and vintage reports, but the hail of spring, and the drought of that summer, brought challenges. Ripeness is a many-splendoured thing, and while sugar levels soared (potential alcohol of 14% was commonplace) and acidities fell, phenolics in skins and pips came along worryingly slowly. The skill was in extraction, and in thereby avoiding the danger of highly alcoholic wines of moderate acidity and hard, coarse tannins. At this stage (and it’s still very early days for 2009) Saint...