About Bordeaux wines: Mrs Winemega newsletter

Dear wine enthusiast,

In 2003 the European Continent experienced extreme heat and consequent dryness. Bordeaux that year produced atypical wines but a recent tasting confirms that the best-performing chateaux have produced sensational wines.

The long awaited comments of our Contributors on Bordeaux 2005 are finally all in! Use the Wine Search engine at the right hand side of the screen to access at Winemega's conclusions on this singular and compelling Bordeaux 2005 vintage.

2005 Bordeaux looks awfully expensive but is this assumption really true? Have a look to the analysis on actual and predicted wine prices by Charles Wyplosz.

Our TOP headings are among the most sought-after pages of Winemega.com. The TOP 50 page classifies the best growths in 2005 and the TOP Region summarizes the most compelling regions with comments from our our Contributors on the weather report and the style of the wines. The TOP Price/Quality page is now online. Despite the dramatic price increases for the most prestigeous estates, we have picked a number of wines that are undervalued in regard to their quality. Winemega's TOP Quality / Price page is an extremely useful tool to wine lovers willing to find a compromise between price and quality. Wineries from all areas of Bordeaux are presenting very successful wines this year and the good news is that there are more great wines than usual hitting the market at fairly reasonable prices. To give you a better idea if it is worth ordering wine futures "en primeur", or not, Winemega.com informs you of the best buying strategies. One can access to relevant information on this new vintage by reading the 2005 harvest reports by the most famous estates (Latour, Margaux, Haut-Brion, d'Yquem among others).

Another breaking news this summer is about our partnership with belmaati.com. Belmaati.com is a community of wine enthusiasts who provide tasting notes on the wines they drink. It's one of the most comprehensive and interesting databases of tasting notes on the internet. At more than 20,000 tasting notes on wines from all over the world, chances are you will easily find what you're looking for! You can search the tasting notes right here from the right hand side template. If you want to provide your own tasting notes to the database, don't hesitate to sign up at belmaati.com. It's totally free to use and free from advertisements.

And because good news never come alone, we are pleased to present a fantastic report by Joe Belmaati about of a phenomenal 66 years vertical tasting of Chateau d'Yquem from 1847 to 2000 he attended a few months ago!

We issued an exclusive new heading about the growing phenomenon of wine blogs around the world. Our unique blog aggregator keeps you constantly aware of any update within our selected group of wine blogs. If you spot other interesting wine blogs that may be worth entering our list, please do not hesitate to contact us!

In a few weeks, Alain will review a number of interesting Bordeaux 2003 after release. 2003 is quite an atypical year in the way that the Bordeaux area that year experienced a serious heat wave and many vines suffered from hydric stress during that summer. Only 248 millimetres of rain were recorded between April and September. Therefore a selection of the soils that have suffered the less from the critical weather conditions are crucial before any purchase. To give you a better idea, please read the different 2003 harvest reports published by many key wineries at Bordeaux.

Winemega also participates to several samplings. Therefore our reviews on Medoc 1994, Bordeaux 1999 (Mission Haut-Brion is a real beauty right now), Bordeaux 2000, Bordeaux 2001, Bordeaux 2002 or the stunning Sauternes-Barsac 1997 are very representative of our views. Panos Kakaviatos, a wine journalist (Decanter..), has written for us a very interesting review on a grand tasting at Saint Emilion. A portrait of Stephane Derenoncourt - the famous wine consultant (Mondotte, von Neipperg estate..) or vertical tastings on Lynch-Bages or the giant event on Léoville las Cases will give you a precise picture of these famous estates.

Learn all the tips on becoming an excellent wine taster. We asked a pro, Lauriann Greene-Sollin, graduate of the prestigious University of Wine of Suze-la-Rousse in France and former Sommelier to explain the different steps to better approach and evaluate a wine.

Lastly, we want to increase the interactivity between you and us! If you have interesting things to say on any subject related to Bordeaux wines or if you recently took part to a wine tasting (at least 10 wines), please don't hesitate to submit your article to us on our contact form. Of course we count on you that your text is well written. However, for copyright reasons, we will ask you to mention your sources, if any. We always reserve ourselves the right or not to publish your article.

I wish you a pleasant stay on Winemega.com and don't hesitate to visit us frequently.

Evelyne Bringolf for Winemega.com