In a repeat of last year, Stephen Tanzer of the International Wine Cellar has left Bordeaux tasting to his colleague Ian D’Agata. Adding to the discordant collection of 2009 tasting notes, D’Agata judges only four wines possible 100-pointers. He explains: “2009 is not a runaway success, as there are many disappointing wines and overall quality is lower than, for example, 2005.”
Nonetheless, 2009 is, he says, an “outstanding vintage". IWC is known to be a harsher scorer than most critics (a Bordeaux has never been awarded a final score of 100 points), so the scores alone may be misleading.
D’Agata writes: “It’s the acidity of the ’09s that makes the wines of this vintage so different from any recent great year… while 2005 produced many more good to very good wines than 2009, the latest vintage may well have yielded more superstars, with numerous estates making some of the finest wines in their history.”
Haut Brion, Latour and Margaux – “one of my favorite wines of the vintage” – all receive 97-100 points, along with right bank wine Petrus – “this wine merits 100 points on the strength of its nose alone”. Once more, the critics appear to be unanimous in their praise of Latour – rated 98-100 by both Parker and Neal Martin, and 97-100 by James Suckling.
The table below shows wines scoring upwards of 93-96 points, along with selected others.
Source: wineaccess.com
