The 2010 vintage is a problem. It is brilliant – radically different to the superb 2009, but just as brilliant.

As a merchant to have so fine a vintage come directly off the back of a year like 2009, billed as the finest in a century, is a problem – ‘an embarrassingly good vintage’ to quote Bordeaux expert Bill Blatch.

But the 2010 vintage is not only brilliant, it is also fascinating, diverse,

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By Myles Mayall

The décor in the country home of the Bouard de Laforest family is a genteel 1930’s blend of bright, angular art deco period paintings, white stone Victorian fireplaces, and colourful shagpile rugs. Modern necessities, like cordless house-phones are tucked discreetly away behind miniature spaniel-shaped statues, and everything is brightly illuminated by sunlight streaming through massive, 19th Century bay windows. It’s a breezily elegant place, perfectly reflecting its patrician owners.

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Last week the results of the Decanter World Wine Awards were published – with rather an interesting twist: surprisingly it is New World countries that dominate the higher price categories, and clear winner in the lower categories not Australia, or Chile (countries famous for producing reliable value-for-money wines) but France!

‘Sacré Bleu!’ might the French say.





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“The greatest gift is a portion of thyself”, so said Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosophically putting suffering and self-denial over material pleasures. Some may interpret the saying at a slightly different level, that a gift should represent the giver, a little piece of themselves. Either way you read it, most people would admit that there’s nothing better than to receive a well thought through gift, something useful, or which may just give plain hedonistic pleasure.

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Is it rude to ask how old you are?

The East Asian market has already spent somewhere upwards of $700 million on Bordeaux futures from the 2009 vintage. But it's the trend, not the volume that is raising eyebrows in the fine wine engine rooms of Bordeaux, Hong Kong and London. Farr Vintners, a top global fine wine merchant, released its figures for the 2009 En Primeur (futures) campaign citing 15% by volume sold to East Asia, and yet 40% by value.

So the East Asian market buys expensive wine - in fact it has been a bumper year for top labels such as Lafite, now selling for a record breaking $24'500 USD for a case of 12 bottles - but who is buying this, and what will happen to the wines once customers take possession two years from now?

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