jamie goode's wine blog: Bordeaux 2005 revisited

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Bordeaux 2005 revisited

Today's day trip to Bordeaux began early, at 04:30, when I got a car to the airport. The purpose of the visit was a tasting of a wide range of 2005 Bordeaux put on by Millesima, a wine merchant selling by mail order to France, UK, Germany and elsewhere in Europe - they are unusual in that they buy direct from the top Bordeaux properties rather than going through negociants (or, if you look at it the other way, I guess they are a negociant selling direct to consumers - equally unusual). Fellow travellers included Neil Beckett, Oz Clarke, Joanna Simon and Sally Easton from the UK, as well as a contingent from Ireland, including Joe Breen, who did a nice review of Wine Science in the Irish Times. Tim Atkin was on the same plane out, but he was off to Yquem and Cheval Blanc.

After a quick flight, we took a cab to Millesima's warehouses, where the tasting was held, split by appellation in several locations in the cellars. Tasting was quite tough: there was a strong smell of pine wood from all the wooden cases, plus a distinctive sawdust smell from the spitoons. It was cold; the wines were brutally tannic; the tank samples we were trying were a bit bottle-shocked. But it was thrilling to be able to try so many of the top wines at an interesting stage in their early development. Two favourites were Pichon Baron and Palmer, both of which were fantastic.

It was also nice to catch up with Michel Bettane, who has some strong views on the 2005s, and Luis Antunes, as well as a few others. On the flight back I had a nice chat with Anthony Hanson, who I've not met before. All in all, a very productive day. I was home by 19:08, which is pretty good going. Bit embarassed about my carbon footprint, though.
Now finishing off the remains of the 2003 Crasto, blogged on yesterday, which is drinking well.

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4 Comments:

At 1:29 AM, Blogger Paul Tudor said...

Yes Anthony Hanson is charming. I have only met him once but he is a true gentleman.

I am curious, what are Bettane's views about the 05s?

 
At 6:00 AM, Anonymous Keith Prothero said...

I buy quite a lot of wine from Millesima and find them very efficient and competitive.Pleased to pick up a few cases of Margaux 2004 from them for 1100 quid!!

 
At 8:58 AM, Blogger timmyc said...

Shouldn't worry too much about your carbon footprint - very interesting programme on C4 last night about the fact that global warming isn't actually happening - I was particularly drawn to it because I'm reading "State of Fear" by Michael Crichton - it is an environmental thriller - but uses actual climate change data and facts to make it's point. In all honesty Crichton is having a go at global warming - but his evidence is strong - for instance did you know that whilst we believe widely that the Antarctic is melting - in fact it is just one peninsular that is melting - the rest of the cap is growing.

Whilst temperatures have gone up over the last 25 years, that follows a period of 60 years of cooling (so much so that the great worry amongst scientists in the early 70's was that we might be heading for another ice age!) Average global temperatures are fluctuating - true - but map them against CO2 increases and there is no real correlation - map the temperatures against solar "activity" - that is solar flares etc. and the correlation is plain to see.

See if you can get a copy of the program from somewhere if you're interested - or I have it on VHS which I could send on once I'm done with it.

www.winepost.blogspot.com

 
At 9:31 AM, Anonymous Jeremy Wilkinson said...

Jamie

I would also recommend trying to see a copy of last night's C4 programme but for slightly different reasons. It was a fascinating example of a science based polemic, with the even-handedness of 'Mondovino'. Whilst there is some merit in challenging the Climate Change orthodoxies, and like many complex issues you can always find corners of the science where the base assumptions are open to debate, much of the programme was devoted to talking heads from the more 'free enterprise' sides of the debate who clearly exhibited a great deal of scepticism of anything which supported the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis. It was sad in a way that the programme maker couldn't have tried to be more even-handed but then it wouldn't have been such good TV (it made me want to shout at the screen a lot, not a good sign...)

I was particularly taken with the idea that the whole idea was a product of a conspiracy between Margaret Thatcher (to bash the miners) and the Far Left (to bash the Americans/Capitalists). This was the stuff of fantasy. There was also a healthy degree of 'selective' data interpretation, at least from my limited perspective from reading the more scientific journals.

That said there were some good points, in particular the challenge the developed world needs to face concerning trying to help the developing world limit their carbon output increases without holding back economic development (which I think is the most difficult issue of all). As a (long lapsed) practising scientist working on ozone depletion I found it quite amusing to see the tribal wars of those days (meteorologists vs atmospheric physicists vs modellers) are still going strong.

 

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