Have your say...Tell us what you think of the Bordeaux 2006 vintage. Have you tasted it? What do you think? Are you worried about this year's prices? Do you have any tips? Email us with your thoughts at news@decanter.com, keeping 'EnPrimeur2006' in the subject field, and we'll post your comments here.
An East Coast skeptic about the accuracy of projecting what adult forms baby wines may take, I have never participated in en primeur. I prefer sampling claret in maturer, bottled form during grand tastings in America, even if I sacrifice the opportunity to play God by disgorging torrential tasting adjectives after zipping through six barrel samples in 16 seconds in the annual Bordeaux decathalon.
As the Bordelais contemplate pricing the 2007’s, they ought to study the edginess besetting America’s economy and the gloom hanging over it in a monumental election year. Facing new markets in China and Russia, the 1855 royals need never worry about depletions, but the smaller fry will need receptive pricing in America.
The words ‘recession’ and ‘French wine’ cannot comfortably occupy a paragraph that dwells on dwindling buying power, sliding interest rates, home-ownership bankruptcies, job loss and public estrangement from a so-called president who seems to stain whatever he touches, not least the once might dollar.
No matter how the Bordelais spin a pricing policy that justifies pricing 2007’s like 2006’s, Joe Six-Pack won’t believe them. If America’s late-night television comedians cared about wine, they would liken such spin to the eternal verity behind the Champenois’ expansion of Champagne’s territory. The one word for it begins with the letter g.
Howard G Goldberg, New York City
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