2009 Chateau Sauman Côtes de Bourg

Ahhh...a rainy April Saturday afternoon, a perfect opportunity to uncork a bottle of wine and enjoy the taste of summers gone by! Today I've decided to open a bottle of 2009 Chateau Sauman Côtes de Bourg to capture the taste of the Gironde in the midst of wet grayness.  Well as any wine fan knows, the 2009 vintage of Bordeaux is being celebrated as the best vintage to come along since time immemorial, okay, maybe I exaggerate, but I've heard folks say it surpasses the wonderful 2005 vintage, and is probably the best in the last three decades at least.  All of this may be true, but you know I am only a novice really, and my experience with Bordeaux is that it often takes years or even decades to know the true quality and potential of the finest wines of the region.  Heck, you can't even buy a Margaux two years after the vintage!  So to me it seems just a bit premature for this 2-year-old vintage to be declared the best in a generation.  Call me old fashioned, but I'd at least like to try a few bottles before I declare such stupendous things!

So today I have a bottle of wonder vintage, and for those who know, the Côtes de Bourg is certainly one of the earliest wines to mature, being primarily based on Merlot, with blends of small quantities of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc (and even occasionally some Malbec), but certainly not like the blends based predominantly on Cabernet which take several more years to mature.  But given the nature of the wine, it seemed like a good candidate to get an early taste of the wunderkind vintage.  And I must admit, it's pretty darn good!  The wine is definitely still quite young and could benefit from a few more years in the cellar, but it's still drinking quite well now.  The wine itself is a rich garnet color, with a scent of leather, cedar and earth.  The wine itself is quite dry, like a good Bordeaux soldier should be, and it has delicate tastes of berry and a hint of cassis.  This wine would go well with the usual red meats (a nice rare ribeye might fit the bill), but I think it would also accent a variety of seafood dishes given that the small town of Bourg-sur-Gironde where this wine originates has been home to fishermen, sailors and winemakers for the better part of two millenia!

I picked up a bottle of this wine on the recommendation of a colleague who I happened to bump into at our favorite wine merchant, G.B. Russo's and Sons.  Bob mentioned that it could benefit from some aging but was drinking well right now, and right he was.  Overall, I would rate this one a solid 7 with the chance to go higher as the years go by, and since I bought this bottle for only $9.99 it's a tremendous value!  So if you happen to come across it where you live, I highly recommend picking up a bottle!