Tasting Report: More 2009s Including Pavie, Pavie-Decesse, and d’Yquem

I tasted a number of 2009 Bordeaux from bottle while I was in Bordeaux tasting the 2011 from barrel in late March. The bottles I tasted were excellent. Some were superb, even close to legendary.

This vintage remains “the” great modern vintage for Bordeaux. Call it what you want, “vintage of a lifetime” or “vintage of a generation.” It’s amazing, from the best names of the region to the unknown names. You can buy across the board here and find great bottles, from wines costing thousands of dollars a bottle to 10 or 20 bucks a bottle. That’s the definition of a truly great vintage for me.

This is a small tasting report, but it covers some important wines that were not bottled when I tasted close to 300 2009s in early January in Bordeaux. The main ones are Pavie, Pavie-Decesse, Bellevue-Mondotte, and d’Yquem.

I have to say that I seriously considered giving all the wines perfect scores of 100 points. But I didn’t want to do it in the end. I know Robert Parker thought Pavie and Bellevue-Mondotte were perfect wines, but they just didn’t reach the maximum for me. I did score the Pavie-Decesse 99 points and the Pavie 98 points. I thought the Pavie-Decesse had a little bit more length and complexity than the Pavie.

I am still a bigger fan of the 2005 Pavie compared to the 2009. I gave that wine a perfect 100 points. I think it has more depth and balance. But we will see in the future.

I was curious how Pavie and Pavie-Decesse compared in price in recent vintages to the first growths and Cheval Blanc. So I asked Liv-ex, the London-based fine wine trading platform to work up some figures. The three graphs show that the two St. Emilions are way behind the five firsts and Cheval in price despite big scores. This is a good thing for consumers considering the two wines’ great quality. I am not sure their owner is happy though.

The d’Yquem, of course, is not like the perfect 100-point 2001. (It’s actually 200 points since Parker gave it a perfect score as well.) I am impressed with the 2009 d’Yquem’s balance and length and intensity though. It is very sweet, but you can’t tell because of the beautiful interplay with the ripe fruit and bright acidity. It seems almost drinkable now. I scored it 98 points.

I have asked my team to put together PDFs with all the scores for the close to 330 2009 Bordeaux I have tasted so far this year. One PDF is listed by score, highest to lowest, and the other is listed alphabetically. I hope you find them useful.