A very good year

Of course, we won't know exactly how the wine will turn out, but with sunny, dry days and cool nights through the summer, as well as a last burst of rain just as the vines were starting to stress, then I am sure this will be a very good year."

Pierre Lurton, director of Ch Cheval Blanc and Ch d'Yquem, is a serious man, as his position demands. But even he could not resist smiling as he talked about the 2009 vintage which was fermenting in the cellar when I visited Bordeaux during harvest last October.

The weather was perfect. That morning I had joined some pickers at a nearby property, and there was still a slight chill in the clear, sunny air as they worked down the rows, swiftly snipping bunches of grapes off the vines. The tightly packed grapes were a joy to see with round, firm, ripe berries, all clean and healthy. And the flavours were terrific – full of glorious, dark-berried fruit, edged with tannins that were already sleek and supple. Bordeaux has not seen a vintage like this for some time.

Cheval Blanc is St Emilion's most famous wine. Situated on the Right Bank of the Gironde, St Emilion is the friendly, more welcoming side of Bordeaux. In general, its wines are Merlot-dominated, because Merlot is better suited to the limestone soil, and they are lush with fruit, open-hearted in style, yet serious in their quality.

But Cheval Blanc bucks the trend. Located right on the edge of the appellation, on fairly flat land north-west of the town, it borders Pomerol. Some of its 38 hectares share the same deep, dense clay of Pomerol while others are on the St Emilion graves – gravelly soil which is much better suited to Cabernet Franc. While most properties use just a small proportion of Cabernet Franc, at Cheval Blanc it makes up almost 60 per cent of the vineyard, giving a definitive bright perfume to the wine and the ability to age. The rest of the cpage is Merlot with just a few per cent of Cabernet Sauvignon and others.

This is not just any Cabernet Franc, as Pierre Lurton explained, using the traditional name for this grape – Bouchet. "Bouchet vines were here on this property in the 19th century and we still have some old vines. Each year I observe them and I mark the best ones and do some small-scale winemaking with the grapes to find out what character they give. Cuttings are taken from old Bouchet vines to create new ones and this adds to the complexity and individuality of the wine. These old vines are our heritage."

However technical this process sounds, it is one of the oldest ways of improving quality in a vineyard. And while the owners of Cheval Blanc, who also own the luxury brand LVMH, can easily afford to provide as many technical gizmos as Lurton requires, his approach is distinctly low-impact. He is not interested in the hi-tech approach to winemaking, preferring instead to concentrate on the vineyard, working with the canopy and the leaf cover to ensure perfect ripeness. Yields are kept low and before harvest a team goes through the vineyard to cut off excess or under-ripe bunches. Finally, grapes are sorted in the vineyard, before being taken to the winery.

It was in the winery that I was allowed to taste the first of the 2009 vintage. The Merlot, picked three weeks earlier was still warm in its stainless steel vat, not yet through malolactic fermentation, and its fruit was dark, sweet and concentrated. With 15 to 18 months in new French oak ahead, natural egg-white fining and absolutely no filtration, this infant wine has a long, and lovely life ahead of it.

I also managed to taste some wines from previous vintages. Over lunch, we drank Petit Cheval 2000, the second wine of the property which spends a shorter time on oak, and it is a wine to be enjoyed a few years younger than the main wine.

Even so, it was delicious with clear blackcurrant and cherry fruit, smooth, soft tannins and a perfectly balanced finish. It went well with the souffl starter served with a salad of jabugo ham and girolles. We then moved on to the main course of rare fillet steak, with mushrooms. This was accompanied by the 1995 Cheval Blanc, which was still showing signs of youth with a solid core of fragrant plums and dark chocolate fruit, wrapped up in ripe structuring, tannins and a long, soft, velvety finish.

The 1989 Cheval Blanc accompanied a selection of cheese and all pretence of youthfulness was cast aside in this wine. It was serious in style, richly dominated by red berry and tobacco notes, layers of complexity and smooth tannins. Made by Pierre Lurton's predecessor, it was clear that the elegance of this property has been maintained through the years. Cheval Blanc is a wine that needs a decade or longer to show its best.

As a finale at lunch, the dessert – flambed crpes with apples – was accompanied by the "other" major name in this property portfolio. As the 1997 Ch d'Yquem was poured into my glass (current price around 200 a bottle) I resisted the temptation to grab the bottle and instead politely swirled my glass, enjoying elegant aromas of sweet concentrated botrytis with heavenly honey and citrus peel flavours, and a perfectly precise finish. Did it go with dessert? I hardly noticed the pud.

The tough economic climate of the last two years has impacted on Bordeaux but 2009 is the vintage that the Bordelais reckon will change their fortunes. The excitement that was evident in the region last October has not gone away in the intervening months and recent en primeur tastings have whipped up enthusiasm for the vintage.

Prices will probably be high for the top wines, but Bordeaux still has a lot of wine to sell. The famous names will be expensive, especially now that the Asian market and the Russians are seriously interested in en primeur Bordeaux.

If you plan to drink your claret rather than just hedge your funds with it, then you may be better off buying away from the top names. Prices won't be released for several more weeks. When they are, I'll let you know.

YP MAG 10/4/10