2008 Saint-Joseph

"The 2009 Cote-Roties will provide both immediate appeal and good cellaring potential," according to Jean-Michel Gerin. "The tannins are very ripe but have no hardness, which allows the fruit to be expressive right now. They might go into a closed stage in a couple of years because the tannins are there, even if you can't see them, but it's unlikely that the wines will seriously shut down-like the 2005s, for example." Two thousand eight gave wines of "old-fashioned alcohol levels, around 12.5% for me," he added. "They're wines to drink now and over the coming few years, not vins de garde."

Gerin likes the structure of his 2007s and the fact that "the wines aren't as solid and the tannins aren't as tough as the 2005s, which are going to be great wines but require a lot of patience." They remind him of a mix of 2006 and 2005, "with more power than the 2006s but some of their accessibility." He believes that most of the top 2007s are "still a little bit tight as most were bottled recently so they really shouldn't be looked at until next spring, at least." For red wines, 2008 "was an incredibly difficult vintage and we had to make a severe selection but it is far better than 2002 here, which was actually not the disaster some people made it out to be. We suffered the association with the southern Rhone that vintage, where it really was a rotten year."