2006 Bordeaux

05/02/10

Coming as it does after 2005, 2006 will always be a Cinderella vintage. The growing season wasn`t rocking chair-easy like `05 but the best, most conscientious and luckiest growers produced fabulous wines; it was not always the most famous names that fared well under pressure. It was also a vintage that, rather cruelly, favoured those with the most resources. If you could muster enough people at the right time, both during the summer and at vintage time, then you were most likely to succeed.

There is, of course, an ulterior motive here. Not for the first time, enthusiasm got the better of us, and - for the sake of the en primeur campaign back in spring 2007 - we went a little too long on many of our favourite wines. Still, fortune favours the brave: the wines were priced at a stonking 1.45 euros to the pound (remember those days?) and today the `06s, more concentrated than the `02s and more serious than the `04s, look cracking value. With the wines all now landed in the UK, trade buyers here and abroad are beginning to plunder our stocks - a sure sign that prices will go only one way. /AR

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