Cheers to the 2008 Bordeaux vintage

A few weeks ago I summarised the 2008 Bordeaux vintage which is now on the market en primeur as being good, and possibly very good. But in these difficult times, the question was: would it sell?

Much would depend on whether the chateaux owners brought their prices down enough and - the X-factor in all this - how the market-maker critic Robert Parker would judge the vintage.

Much to everyone's surprise, it's all been much more positive than we ever dared hope.

The chateaux owners have seen sense and brought their prices down quite dramatically. The Bordeaux first growths (Lafite, Margaux, Latour, Haut Brion and Mouton Rothschild) led the way and are 40-50 per cent down on last year.

As Baroness de Rothschild at Mouton said, the prices have "nothing to do with the quality and everything to do with the world market". The Rothschilds have a knack of getting it right, so everyone else naturally followed suit.

Now for the real surprise. Writing in The Wine Advocate (the fine wine bible; not exactly bedtime reading but very detailed and precise), Robert Parker describes 2008 as "a totally unexpected and excellent vintage", adding that there are a number of superb wines that are "close to, if not equal to, the prodigious 2000 or 2005 vintages... two years with many of the best wines I have ever tasted". And that's about as good as it gets from Mr Parker.

So the Bordeaux en primeur market seems to be very much alive and kicking. The chief example is Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, the most widely traded of all the Bordeaux first growths. The wine first appeared on the market at £1,500 per case in mid-April, and the demand has been so great that it is now trading at just under £3,000 per case - an increase of nearly 100 percent in a matter of weeks.

A word of caution, though, before we get carried away: all prices are down for the Bordeaux 2008s, but only the top 30 or so classified growths are actively traded and qualify for both investment and drinking. The lower level ones will, by and large, make good drinking wines, but don't buy them with a view to selling them later. ·