Fear is spreading among the UK's biggest wine sellers after Robert Parker, the American critic whose ratings have dictated the market in wine futures for 20 years, declared the much-maligned 2008 Bordeaux vintage to be "excellent".

The year was supposed to be one of the worst vintages of the decade after a summer of rain and little sunshine. So bad that some of the UK's leading wine traders did not go to Bordeaux this year to taste the new wines in the increasingly important "primeur campaign", when new vintages are released in the market for the first time.