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Château Coutet 2009 Barsac 17.5 - Drink 2014-2034 

Very rich and ripe. Very sweet and pear juice and much bigger than the Climens. Lower acid. Long.

 

So how do the 2009s look in bottle?

I delayed my departure to New York last week by a couple of days so that I could attend the annual presentation by Bordeaux's Union des Grands Crus of the latest vintage to go into bottle. The 2009s had been so unusually ripe and luscious en primeur (see this guide to our extensive initial coverage), and our recent tasting of the 2009 crus bourgeois so impressive, that I was particularly keen to see how the classed growths would perform at this, their first public outing outside France.

The caravanserai that is the UGC en masse had been in Paris the day before for their first presentation of the vintage in bottle to the French trade. In early November they will be showing their 2009s in Merano, Milan, Geneva and Brussels. Three weeks later the 2008s will be shown in Seoul, Osaka, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen and Guangzhou. Then it's back to showing off the 2009s, in five American cities and two Canadian in late January and at Prowein in Germany and in both major Brazilian cities in early March. Phew!

I suspect many of those who saw the wines en primeur wondered whether they might not look a bit too soft and sweet as they aged. This may eventually happen but last week I thought that virtually all the reds I tasted - all on the left bank admittedly - were looking well balanced and had sufficient structure and refreshment factor for at least mid-term development. Julia found that some of the right-bank wines she tasted, on the other hand, did lack freshness and elegance. For the record, Julia tasted the dry whites and I tasted the sweet whites at the end, which may explain the greater disparity between my primeur and bottled scores in Sauternes than in any other appellation.

We made a note of all wines in which scores varied by at least a full mark out of 20 between primeurs and last week's tasting. Wines that impressed Julia in bottle more than they had impressed me en primeur were Chx Clarke, La Lagune, several Pessac-Léognans - Larrivet Haut-Brion (white as well as red), Latour Martillac (red, now much fresher) and Smith Haut Lafitte (red) - and on the right bank Chx Grand Mayne, Larmande and Gazin. Wines that Julia found disappointing in bottle compared with how they showed to me en primeur were Clos Fourtet and Chx Dassault and La Pointe.

As for marked disparities between my en primeur impressions and how the wines looked in bottle to me, I was much more impressed now by Chx Brane Cantenac, Langoa Barton and d'Armailhac whereas I was a little disappointed that the early promise of Chx d'Angludet, Desmirail and St-Pierre did not seem to have followed through into bottle (although it is worth remembering that my primeurs tastings of 2009s from these relatively modest properties were blind whereas last Tuesday's tasting at the Royal Opera House was not).

As for the sweet wines, they really are very sweet in 2009! So much so that I found the Doisy-Daëne that I had liked so much en primeur just a bit too much at this stage, and I think I probably initially overrated Nairac too. But de Fargues, Rayne Vigneau and, especially, Coutet, all showed better last week than in April 2010, I thought.
This is a vintage that should give a great deal of pleasure, especially with sweet whites and reds in the medium term. As for the dry whites, they tend to be a little soft and should generally be drunk rather earlier than leaner vintages. But real disappointments were very few and far between.

Look out for my overview on Saturday.

Tasting notes are arranged by commune, left bank first, then right. Reds before dry whites and then sweet wines at the end. Last but absolutely not least.