Is 2006 the Bordeaux vintage of the century? You might think so from the prices British merchants are asking for it. But it certainly isn't. As I wrote here in May before all the prices were out, 2006 Bordeaux, with few exceptions, is not a must-buy vintage. Heavy rain and rot accounted for uneven quality and reduced yields everywhere, with over-extracted, aggressively tannic clarets a 2006 hallmark; ditto, weedy, hollow wines. The only hope in this challenging, labour-intensive year were the limited numbers of châteaux that rejected the majority of their crop to produce some delicious, surprisingly fat, ripe, early-maturing clarets with elegant, supple, cherry and plum-charged fruit, plus some zingy, citrussy dry white bordeaux.

Pomerol, with its early maturing merlot grape and small, more manageable sized estates, is the best 2006 Bordeaux commune by far, yet, weirdly, sporadic successes have been made elsewhere.

What no dedicated bordeaux fan could have predicted is the obscene prices the Bordelais are charging for the vintage. Fine wine prices have been rising for the past 18 months and bordeaux in particular has shifted up a gear due to the stratospheric sums fetched for the great 2005 vintage. What traditional claret drinkers were hoping for, though, was sensible prices for an average, inconsistent year. Not so.

Despite a generally disinterested UK and US market, keen, new, über-wealthy buyers from Japan and elsewhere in the Far East have snapped up the 2006 vintage and to date around 10 per cent of the much fancied 50 or so top-classed growths have sold out, even at these scandalously high prices.

Last month, Troplong Mondot, a leading St Emilion estate, caused ructions by releasing its 2006 vintage at a price level which equated to £650 or so per case for British drinkers, almost treble the sum the château had sold its 2004 for. Then, later that month, lemming-like, the Bordeaux first-growths followed suit, with most quadrupling the price of their 2004 vintage to around £4,000 per case for 2006, with Cheval Blanc excelling themselves at £4,300, or so. Madness.

So what can bordeaux fans do now that upper-echelon 2006 clarets have been priced out of their league? Go for the next best thing; lesser clarets at £100-£200 per case, including d'Aiguilhe, La Prade, du Glana, de Francs, Fonroque, Batailley, Clos des Jacobins and Cantemerle. On the next price rung up, Quinault l'Enclos, Domaine de Chevalier, Lascombes, La Fleur de Gay, Gazin, Providence and Pontet-Canet all look sound bets. Above this and you are mostly in the land of the more-money-than-sense brigade. As one uncharacteristically honest Bordeaux proprietor put it: "On the top tier, you are not going to get your money back on 2006 bordeaux for a long time." Quite.

jane.macquitty@thetimes.co.uk

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