Bourdeaux 2005 En Primeur

On Tuesday evening we went to a BBR En Primeur tasting and tried 49 out of the 74 wines on show. Mostly the wines were presented in pairs, the 2005 en primeur and a recent vintage (pretty evenly spread over the 2001 through to 2004 vintages).

Interesting to compare the wine in its "raw" state with an officially released bottle. Trying to image how the 2005 will evolve is beyond my palette even with the recent vintage to contrast with. So I took it more in the educational sense of tasting wines I would never otherwise buy nor get to taste including a number of classed growths.

We got chatting to Max the saleman account manager who keeps sending Mary wicked, tempting emails of wines to buy. And so often she succumbs but, it has to be said, to my benefit as well. "Who *are* all these people?" I wanted to know. Many of them looked like old money, city types: merchant bankers, brokers, barristers, and such like in the uniform of pinstripe suit. Plus a few who looked like landed gentry. And a few normals like us.

He did reveal that those present were all invited, account holders only. Some like us spend a few thousand pounds a year, some spend up to 15 million! Too late for a career switch methinks?