As with so many things, the best way to eat it is simple: I've been snapping off the very first few heads and eating them raw. I've been practising organic gardening for a quarter of a century, and I started because I couldn't find food with a decent flavour I was brought up on farmhouse cooking. Our food wasn't organic as such, but things were grown properly back then. It was the kind of cooking you learnt through watching and learning, and it's an approach I tried to reflect in my Complete Fruit Book. Outside this inner sanctum, the remaining 200-odd are likely to go up by 10-25 per cent, or somewhere between £25-£100 a bottle to you and me, with petits ch?aux more affordable at £10-£20 A vintage, yes, but do check the price before you leap.. A first growth like Ch?au Latour, for instance, could sell for a la-la land £200 or more a bottle. Excitement from an eager American market, along with Europe and the emerging markets of Russia and the Far East, suggest the top 40 or 50 can ask, and will achieve, record prices.

Investors will cash in, but better news for wine drinkers is that many fine, lesser classified ch?aux such as Batailley, Belgrave, Brane Cantenac and Talbot should be relatively affordable, as should good crus bourgeois in the mould of Beaumont, La Tour de By, Ph?n-S?r and Charmail.As prices start trickling out of Bordeaux next month for the 250 or so most in-demand ch?aux, UK wine merchants will sell, sell, sell. The wines from Pessac-L?nan in the Graves are more patchy, but Haut-Brion is a great wine, Domaine de Chevalier and Haut-Bailly, one tier down, but spot on.Despite inevitable variations in style, 2005 is likely to go down as a great vintage in line with the most recent classics of 1982, 1990, 1996 and 2000. Front runners include the "first growth" ch?aux of Lafite, Latour and Margaux, with "supersecond" L?ille Las Cases right up there, closely pursued by a dense pack of successes, including, among others, Palmer, Giscours and Langoa Barton, L?ille Poyferr?Lynch Bages, Pontet Canet, Pichon Lalande, Calon S?r, Montrose and Cos d'Estournel.The more powerful and seductive merlot-dominated styles of St Emilion and Pomerol are in some cases too much of a good thing, with oaky notes and overextracted tannins, but there are many fabulous wines too, notably Ausone, P?us and Le Pin at first growth level, and just sitting below them, Vieux Ch?au Certan, Trotanoy, La Conseillante, L'Ang?s and Figeac. Prices may be set by the Bordelais, but not without careful scrutiny of the verdicts of the trade and press. After a week tasting wines of great purity and richness, my first impression is that the M?c, where cabernet sauvignon rules, has produced the most vibrant, classic and potentially long-lived wines because it was one of those rare years in which this late-ripening grape could be left to ripen without interference. Yet even though it takes years for the true personality of a great wine to reveal itself, first impressions are crucial. Perhaps it's only natural for proud parents to be boastful when they're about to send their progeny out to work for them, but only the wines themselves can speak for the style and quality of the vintage.

Amid the hype surrounding what some Bordelais are calling the greatest vintage ever, the knives are being sharpened for the killing they expect to make next month when they announce their prices. The warm, dry summer of 2005 was so ideal that even before the first succulent bunch was plucked from the vine, siren voices from the world's greatest fine-wine region were suggesting that 2005 could be as great as such legendary vintages as 1928, 1945 and 1961. Meanwhile, blanch the broad beans in boiling salted water for 3 minutes, drain and pod.Strain the stock through a fine-meshed sieve into a clean saucepan. Add the other leek, peas and French beans, and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add the broad beans, parsley and chives, and simmer for another 5 minutes and re-season if necessary.. Apparently insulated from the crisis engulfing the rest of France (where supply of wine outstrips demand, regulation reigns supreme, and producers find it harder to compete with foreign imports), Bordeaux ch?aux set out their stall this month for a first taste of the 2005 vintage from the barrel. Such is the lavish wining and dining of the world's trade and press during the week-long tasting that Bordeaux might have a serious case to answer for deliberately fattening the calf. Add the herb leaves and blend in a liquidiser until smooth, then drain through a fine-meshed sieve.