The early campaign flurry of releases continues, with leading wines from Haut-Médoc, Saint-Émilion, Pessac-Léognan and Sauternes all set to be released today (Friday 3 May), following the crucial release of wines from Domaines Baron de Rothschild yesterday. Prior to the publication of appellation-by-appellation profiles, here are my tasting notes where they have not already been published. A note on the ratings This year, as is now my habit, I have again decided to provide an indicative rating for each wine alongside the published comment. All such comments and ratings are necessarily subjective (they cannot be anything else when one thinks about it). I would urge you to look at the two together and, if anything, to privilege the comment over the rating. My aim is more to describe the wine in the context of the vintage, the appellation and recent vintages of the same and similar wines, rather than to judge the wine per se. The ratings, of course, reflect my subjective evaluations and relative preferences between wines. Your palate is likely differ from mine. I hope that my comments give you at least enough information to be able to recalibrate my ratings and, in so doing, to align them more closely to your own palate. To give an example: if the idea of the ‘new classicism’ leaves you cold, you may well wish to discount the (typically high) ratings I have given to wines described in such terms. 2023, like both of its predecessors is, of course,
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Fine Wine
