Dry white bordeaux is the forgotten son in the fine wine family. Perhaps the 2007 vintage will go some way to putting that right. For once the dry white wines of Bordeaux take precedence over the reds, no mean feat given that they represent only a tenth of the region’s production and command little attention or market value. Many dry whites this year are gorgeous, vibrant, zesty, citrus and tropical fruit-stashed wines. Even Bordeaux’s sweet 2007 whites, while good, are not in the same league.

What redressed the balance is precisely what scuppered the reds: a miserable, cold, wet summer, just like ours. June, July and August of last year were a washout, and growers were convinced in September that their red grapes wouldn’t ripen at all. Bordeaux’s saviour was an Indian summer that lasted well into October. How much you pulled back from a disaster, as one Bordeaux proprietor put it to me, is the nub of 2007.

Few in the region share the view of Alain Raynaud, of Quinault l’Enclos, that the vines made “a very brilliant recovery”. Most châteaux readily admit that the key to producing drinkable 2007 bordeaux was hard graft. Avoiding problems with dilution and harsh, green, unripe flavours demanded endless hours of leaf-plucking on the sunny side of bunches, bunch-thinning and then savage selection and rejection. Christian Moueix, of Château Pétrus, rates 2007 as “an average year” and cannot remember a vintage where he and his workers had to tend the vines and taste the grapes so many times (they made a record 15 separate sprays against rot and downy mildew). Even lesser properties changed their harvest plans twice a day over what was for many the longest harvest season ever.

Those hard-working châteaux with funds, expertise and determination have at best made some surprisingly drinkable, soft, floral, velvety, richly coloured, light, early-maturing clarets that make up in drink-now fruit what they lack in long-distance flavour. Most of the offerings that succeeded in 2007 have such low levels of life-enhancing tannin and acidity that they’ll make precociously pleasurable drinking from three to ten years of age.

With a weak pound and strong euro, as well as uncertainty in the financial markets and little back stock in the hands of Bordeaux growers or négociants, prices for 2007 bordeaux are unlikely to fall to a level where many British drinkers will want to buy them at this early, en primeur stage. The whites are a sound bet, but for those who have to buy a 2007 red bordeaux to mark a birth, or for new collectors who simply want some claret to drink while waiting for the great ’05s to come round, I will let you know what to buy and how much you will have to pay for it when all the wines and prices are released. Start saving now.

jane.macquitty@thetimes.co.uk

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