10 YEARS ON: BORDEAUX LEFT BANK 2010

If only every ‘10 years on’ tasting were as good at this. The kind where the wines are living up to already high expectations, and where your memory of them as fledgling samples a decade ago is still so fresh that you are just thrilled to check in on old friends to see how they are getting on.

It doesn’t seem so long ago that I was sitting in my tiny town garden, at the end of the 2010 en primeur week, writing about the architectural nature of the vintage on what was at the time my personal blog. 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, floors, trying to work out what was what and which elements were going to end up on top. A crash-course in the interplay of tannins and acidity, and the many different ways in which they can strengthen or strangle a wine, and how much depth and sheer quality of fruit is needed in this kind of vintage to stand up to the overpowering presence of those other two elements.

Checking back in on the 2010s during the horizontal tasting 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.

Outstanding wines

And yet 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 – fewer present exchanged smiles or shared recognition as we made our way through the line-up at BI Wines & Spirits – but there were many 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 59 wines in the whole tasting (compared to 67 in the 2009 line-up), I gave 100 points to five, one more than last year and five more than for the 2008s, along with two 99s and eight 98s. And this is not en primeur; this is in bottle after 10 years when you can feel utterly confident that what is good now has proved its worth.

I would still say that 2009 is the vintage that will win more friends, certainly if you are drinking it any time soon. They are brilliant wines that