Claret is perfect with spring lamb. Mary Dowey advises on how to splash out
If it's Easter it must be Bordeaux. So I've always thought, as red Bordeaux, with its savoury charm, is the perfect wine to drink with spring lamb. This year I feel a greater urge than ever to put claret on the table, as the subtle tastes of more fine examples than I have ever encountered at a single event are fresh in the mind from an overnight jaunt to Bordeaux.
The occasion was the 18th annual tasting hosted by Millésima, a Bordeaux company specialising in mail order. Held in its massive cellars, it was a very grand affair. A string of affairs, indeed, as a serious evening tasting, a posh dinner, an even more serious morning tasting and a copious lunch were fitted into 24 hours. Let's just say that running for an almost-missed flight afterwards was painful.
Millésima's chairman and managing director, Patrick Bernard, is a rotund, dapper man with the sheen of extreme prosperity that is a Bordeaux trademark. Until 1983, his efforts were focused on the family brandy business. "But I used to play squash with a wine broker," he told me over dinner, "and we'd go for lunch afterwards - with wine, of course. That's where my interest began."
Before long he was thinking both of buying an estate (Domaine de Chevalier, in Graves) and of setting up a wine-trading company. "I thought the splendid vintage of 1982 would help me to learn the job without messing things up," he says. From the outset his idea was to deal only in the great classic wines of Bordeaux. By 1988 he had broken the mould by becoming the first Bordeaux merchant to sell direct to consumers.
Now that Millésima is France's leading mail-order fine-wine merchant, Bernard has his eye on other markets, including Ireland, which so far accounts for less than 1 per cent of his 20 million turnover.
His company does not claim to be the most competitive on pricing. Its greatest strength, he maintains, is the breadth and depth of its range, meaning that an unusually large number of fine wines are on offer across several vintages. A snoop around the cellars confirms this.
Large-format bottles - magnums, double magnums, jeroboams and imperials - are also a speciality. And tasting cases are cleverly conceived, perhaps offering two bottles each of the six most sought-after wines of 1998 or 2000, or pitting stars of the right bank against some from the left.
A brief word about the vintages we sampled (2002 for the crus bourgeois and unclassed growths and 2003 for the classed growths). The difference was quite marked - unsurprisingly, perhaps, as 2002 was cool and rather damp, producing some wines with hard, greenish tannins, while 2003 was a scorcher. Neither has the classic charm of 2001, a year that is emerging from the shadow of the blockbuster, strongly hyped 2000.
In Saint Emilion and Pomerol, in particular, many 2003s seemed to me far too sweet, jammy and lacking in acidity to be remotely impressive. The underlying concern is that, even without this heatwave summer, many chateaux were already moving towards a riper, more New World style. I wish they would exercise more restraint; otherwise, a lot of Bordeaux soon won't taste like Bordeaux at all.
Before you seize your credit card and rush to log on to www.millesima.com, it may be as well to know that the average spend is 1,500 - probably rather more than most of us splurge on wine most weekends. But it is Easter, so perhaps it's time for an indulgence. Who wants to be average?
Still, it may be worth mentioning that Bernard is involved in another internet wine-sales company, www.wineandco.com. Here the average order is worth €200. Phew.
For the Irish edition of Millésima's 2005 price list, freephone 00800-26733289, e-mail millesima@ millesima.com or visit www.millesima.com. Delivery is free with orders over €760; otherwise it costs €45