2008 Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, St Julien, Bordeaux []

Tasting at Ch. Ducru-Beaucaillou is a surreal experience. To say that the Borie family have an unusual taste in modern art is an understatement but once you get past the flamboyant bright orange-yellow décor and copper filigree sliding doors of the tasting ‘tunnel’, the 2008 wine was by far the finest Ducru we had ever tasted. Bruno Borie attributes the triumph of 2008 to his 45-strong team who had worked together meticulously to create this enormously pure, clean and complex Ducru with sophisticated, supple tannins and gorgeous, fat, juicy fruit. Sensational. Ducru’s tasting note compares this wine to ‘a Roman construction, all in roundness, but imposing’. PR spin perhaps but, in 2008, we are forced to agree. Sensational.