Anson: How Bordeaux 2009 wines taste now

Jane Anson reports on how the Bordeaux 2009 vintage is tasting 10 years on. Have the wines lived up to the initial hype at the time of their release?

I have awarded four 100-point scores, one 99 and seven 98s from the 67 Bordeaux 2009 wines retasted.

You don’t need me to tell you that these are high scores, and a clear sign that (using the Decanter World Wine Awards system) 2009 is a Gold year. To compare with last year, the 2008 10 Years On tasting saw no 100-point wines and only two at 98 points.

Not since the ‘2005 10 Years On’ tasting has it felt quite so pleasurable to be working through the lineup at BI Wine & Spirits in London, organiser of this event every year. Oh, and not a single corked wine, the first time that had happened according to marketing director Giles Cooper.

It was fascinating to be retasting these wines for a number of reasons, not least because many of us there have recently been looking again at both 2015 and 2016 Bordeaux, and the difference in individual estate styles and more general winemaking fashion was pretty clear.

The 2009 vintage was born at a time in Bordeaux when bulky fruits and full oak impact were still highly prized commodities, and often extraction levels were pretty full-on.

There were a few wines that have still not escaped the impact of this, such as Troplong Mondot and, to a lesser extent, Cos d’Estournel.

But in many cases, with Pavie a notable example, the terroir has come to the fore with 10 years in bottle, giving definition to the wonderful generosity on display.

The best don’t ask you to choose between generosity and elegance, and are really to be savoured.

Taste Bordeaux 2009, 2010 and 2015 at our Fine Wine Encounter this June

When to drink Bordeaux 2009 wines

In terms of when to open them, check the drinking windows in the tasting notes below, because there are some clear differences.

Some are ready to go now, others still need four or five years.

As a rule, many 2009s will be ready to drink within approximately the same windows as the 2005, and I expect that the less flamboyant but no less lovely 2005 will beat this 2009 vintage over the long-term for ageing ability.

In contrast, I’m not sure that the 2010 vintage will be quite so smile-inducing at 10 years old, but I remain pretty certain that it will be more so at 20 years.

Vintage roundup

‘After a late bud break, this was one of the famous ‘armchair’ vintages for many in Médoc’

Weather wise, Bordeaux 2009 ticked each of the five boxes that the Bordeaux Institute of Oengology use to judge a vintage.

To compare, 2005 also ticked all five and a little more smoothly, while 2006 got three out of five, 2007 only one and 2008 just scraped three out of five but was really closer to 2.5.

After a cold winter and cool rainy April with a late bud break, things turned to pretty much perfect conditions for the rest of the 2009 growing season.

That meant successful flowering and fruit set – if you avoided the hail storms of May – and early colour change, although some leaves and shoots were still growing due to rain in early July, so slightly putting pressure on water-retaining soils.

An extremely dry rest of July, August and September meant that grapes reached full maturity. Conditions were dry for harvest with cool nights, allowing tannins and anthocyanins to concentrate in the skins of the red grapes.

The drought over the summer was particularly pronounced in the Médoc, where some vines in hot or extremely well-drained soils suffered a little. But generally speaking this was one of the famous ‘arm chair’ vintages.

One of driest vintages on record, with almost no rain from 10 July until the end of harvest on 14 October. There were 287 hours of sunshine between 10 August and 10 September. Most harvests were carried out in the last week of September through to the first or second week of October.

You can see the warmth in the alcohols, which were up to 15.5%abv in the case of Troplong Mondot. A large number of wines came in at 14.5%.

The average sugars in 2009, on readings taken in late September, were 253g in the Merlot and 216g in the Cabernet Sauvignon. That is compared to 244g for Merlot and 222g for Cabernet Sauvignon in 2005.

Having said that, there were many wonderful St-Emilions in this tasting, particularly where the limestone soils could tempter the exuberance.

I had been worried about finding Brett and other spoilage notes because of the ripeness, but in fact only found one wine with potential volatile acidity, and only a few that really were showing signs of fatigue.

It’s hard to pick between a Left Bank or Right Bank vintage, although I would give a slight leaning to Pomerol and St-Emilion on the evidence of this tasting. Oh, and there were some amazing Pessac-Léognan wines, particularly Haut-Bailly.

Pricing

The world economy was recovering from the 2008 financial crash, but the Bordelais didn’t let that get in the way of ambitious en primeur pricing for 2009 vintage wines.

Luckily for them, China was waking up to en primeur – albeit this newfound demand would not last – and this arguably allowed some châteaux to get away with higher prices at the time.

Some prices have not risen subsequently and it’s fair to say that some estates did long-term damage to their reputations by overly high pricing in both 2009 and 2010.

Overall, the Bordeaux 2009 vintage has risen in price by 33% on average since release, in pound sterling terms, according to Liv-ex figures released in November 2018.

Some have done better than others. Grand Puy Lacoste, for example, showed brilliantly in this tasting and would have been a wise investment, coming out at €48 and available on The Place de Bordeaux today at something around €72, a rise of 50%.

Pichon Baron has performed similarly well, coming out at the time at €90 and going on the Place de Bordeaux today for €155, up 72%.

Gazin has done even better, coming out at €45 ex-Bordeaux and today available at €98, a rise of 117%. And Clinet is a clear superstar price-wise, coming out at €70 and today available on the Place for €250, a 257% rise.

Even those with price drops can probably argue their way out of it. The First Growths, as you can see from this tasting, delivered absolutely incredible wines. Although they are 25% below their release price on average right now, 2009 is a vintage for the long-term and so there is a long way to go.

See all wines from the tasting here

Tasting Bordeaux 2009 wines: 10 years on – the top scorers:

See all wines from the tasting here