Bordeaux 2010: The top rated wines tasted 10 years on

The Bordeaux 2010 wines are living up to high expectations, and my memory of them as fledgling samples a decade ago is still so fresh that it was just thrilling to check-in on old friends to see how they are getting on.

If only every ’10 years on’ tasting was as good as this.

Scroll down for Jane Anson’s top Bordeaux 2010 wines tasted 10 years on

It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was sitting in my tiny town garden, at the end of en primer week for the 2010 vintage, writing about the architectural nature of the wines.Tasting the 2010s when they were still in-barrel was an exercise in endurance at times. You had to grapple with width, depth, angles, walls and floors, trying to work out the order of things and which elements of the young wines were going to end up on top.

It was a crash course in the interplay of tannins and acidity, and the many different ways in which they can strengthen or strangle a wine. It was also a demonstration of how much depth and sheer quality of fruit is needed in vintages like this, to stand up to the overpowering presence of the other two elements.Checking back in on them during the horizontal in London was always going to be fascinating. I knew I was going to find some great wines, but I was worried that too many would continue to be about endurance rather than enjoyment.

I was almost certain that 10 years would not have been enough to soften the wines, and that we would be drumming our fingers and scratching our heads working out when they could be approached.

‘These are some of the best wines Bordeaux has ever produced’

But where a year ago, tasting the 2009s at the 10 year mark had surprised me by their brilliance, the 2010s ended up doing far more than simply living up to my expectations.

There was less of the exuberant fun of retasting the 2009s, but the 2010 line-up at BI Fine Wine & Spirits was full of wow moments all the same.

For me they did what the 2010s have always had the capacity to do; slowly but surely convince you that these are some of the best wines Bordeaux has ever produced.

I have never given so many high scores in any tasting. Of the 61 wines here, I gave five 100-point scores, one more than for the 2009 tasting last year, which included 67 wines. I also gave two 2010 wines 99 points, plus eight 98-point ratings.

And this is in-bottle, nearly a decade on from the harvest, when you can feel utterly confident that what is good now has proved its worth.

See all the 2010 wines in the ten years on tasting

I would still say that Bordeaux 2009 is the vintage that will win more friends, certainly if you are drinking it any time soon. They are brilliant wines that took my breath away last year, and that showed how terroir signature comes through after 10 years, even in vintages like 2009 that were so appealing and fruit-driven when young.

But the 2010 manages to take that brilliance and build on it, and will just keep on delivering time and again over the next two, three, four or more decades. The best examples are unimpeachable, if we are allowed to use that phrase right now.

Bordeaux 2010 vintage recap

Outstanding weather delivered wines combining high tannins, high acidity and high alcohol, and a year that one day is likely to genuinely compete for the title ‘vintage of the century’.

From July to September only 50mm of rain fell across the region, making it the driest summer of the decade; more so than 2005 and 2009 during the same period.

Merlot harvesting began on 21 September, with Cabernets coming into the cellar from early October, which was similar to 2009 but the picking in 2010 lasted longer.

As the Institute of Oenology wrote in its annual roundup, ‘Could Nature really have offered another great vintage coming on the heels of 2009… we can confirm that, yes, it has’.

It added, ‘The reds of 2010 are exceptional on both banks of the river, in Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon… liquid beauty.’

When to drink the Bordeaux 2010 wines

In nearly all cases, the angular craziness of these wines when tasted en primeur has evolved to give many of them a solid framework to take us into the next few decades – but it’s a structure that is no longer hiding the quality and quantity of black fruits on offer.

Although there is clearly no rush to get going on them, most are already approachable, at least with a good five or six hours in a carafe.

But there are exceptions. The First Growths, for example, are all nowhere near ready. This is notable because they have been suffering a little over the past few years from increasingly close competition from the Super Seconds.

But the First Growths were ahead of the pack in this tasting, almost without fail and in an extremely strong field, simply in terms of their construction.

Their huge tannic structure, which stood out even with the clear personality differences between them, will need at least 15 or 20 years in the bottle before the wines begin to soften. This serves as a reminder of how these estates lie on exceptional pieces of land.

Best appellations

Although the tasting was packed full of delightful wines, Pauillac stood out for me. At times, it seemed like this northern powerhouse was delivering a line-up of greatest hits.

St-Julien was close behind, but my money would go on the gravels of Pauillac in this most late ripening of years. This is the first time I have ever given three perfect scores to the three Pauillac First Growths.

There was less clear brilliance on the Right Bank, and overall it was a little more subdued in its showing. Three of my four 100-point scores for the 2009 vintage went to the Right Bank, but all were in Pauillac or St-Julien during this 2010 tasting.

I found a number of St-Emilion 2010 wines that were still pretty austere at this point, almost impenetrably so, particularly those on limestone soils. Pomerol has plenty of wines to dive into already; I didn’t away any 100-point ratings here, but many of the wines were grazing that level.

We tasted fewer 2010 wines from Pessac-Léognan, but on the whole these also showed great consistency.

I also found very few wines with faults, except for one heartbreakingly corked Cheval Blanc (with no replacement bottle).

The 2010 vintage had such good construction, and also high levels of acidity, that most wines have been well protected against deviation and spoilage.

Pricing

This has arguably been the Achilles heel of 2010, depending on your purchasing strategy.

The average price point, according to Liv-ex in a 2017 survey, was €250 per bottle ex-Bordeaux, compared to €225 for the 2009s, and €76 for the 2008s.

And you’ll know that many of the top wines, notably the ones with the biggest price rises, were unable to maintain these prices. Lafite Rothschild, for example, was initially offered at as much as £12,000 per case in bond [for the third tranche]. It was recently around £7,300, up from its low point of £5,500 in 2015.

When you look closer, a lot of the vintage’s bad reputation on price has come from the performance of the Firsts and the Super Seconds. They suffered the most in the well-documented fine wine market fall that began in mid-2011, although the situation has since improved.

Taking a longer view, many of the classified 2010 red wines have risen in price since release.

Even some of the most exclusive names have delivered on their early confidence. Le Pin, for example, was released at £18,000 per 12-bottle case in the UK market, and was recently going for between £35,000 and £37,000.

Also worth saying…

Retasting these wines reminded me that Bordeaux is still very much vintage-led, no matter how many advances have been made in viticulture to help with more challenging years.

This raft of high scores might lull you into a false sense of security that Bordeaux always tastes like this. But it doesn’t.

My recent Bordeaux 2017 in bottle retastings, for example, are a reminder that five-star vintages like 2010 just don’t come along very often.

These are wines where the depth and width of tannins encircles the fruit effortlessly. It is so blindingly obvious that they are well made and will age that it would be ridiculous not to recommend getting hold of them.

See Jane Anson’s top Bordeaux 2010 wines tasted 10 years on

This tasting was hosted by BI Fine Wine & Spirits in London

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