For the Easter weekend, there’s nothing better than an in-depth report on Bordeaux 2025. To be fair, and the weather last year apart, the production statistics are quite something: half the amount of wine produced than in 2016, the lowest crop since 1991 (again) and 20,000 hectares of vines (50,000 acres) along with 1,000 growers gone in three years. Crikey.
This thrilling collection of weather graphics through the years serves really as an appendix to my Bordeaux 2024 weather and crop report. I started preparing these images of the daily rainfall and temperatures during the growing season in 2016 and they are all shown below.
Here’s my annual report on the amount of wine produced in Bordeaux last year, and how the weather shaped the size of the crop, and the wines, in 2024. (The top image is of the Cabernet Sauvignon harvest at Château Lafite Rothschild on a sunny October day. Below is a sorting table at Château Figeac in Saint-Emilion, also in October 2024.)
With the world of fine wine descending on Bordeaux to taste the latest vintage in the second half of April, here’s my report on how the weather in 2023 shaped the wines and the size of the crop.
It should help to serve as a backdrop as to why the wines taste the way they do – even at this early stage for the most sought-after reds – and to put 2023 into context by comparing the conditions with previous years.
The top wines from Bordeaux 2022 are sold ‘en primeur’ by merchants during May and June, as soon as they are released by the châteaux and on through the Bordeaux trade. I wrote two articles on Bordeaux 2022 for the UK trade magazine, Harpers Wine & Spirit, for the April and May issues. The first was on how the weather shaped the vintage, the second on the wines themselves, along with some production stats.
As a follow-up to my detailed weather and harvest report for Bordeaux 2022, I’ve crunched some of the numbers on the yields across different appellations. The data was released by customs and the CIVB – the Bordeaux wine bureau – at the end of March and, although it won’t be of the slightest interest to most sane wine lovers, it’s fairly clear what’s going to happen to prices for many of the most sought-after wines en primeur.
With the world of fine wine descending on Bordeaux to taste the latest vintage in April, here’s my report on how the weather in 2022 shaped the wines. It will serve as a backdrop as to why the wines taste the way they do – even at this early stage, of course, for the reds – and to put 2022 in context by comparing the conditions with recent years.
Bordeaux welcomed professionals from the world of fine wine – for the first time in three years – for the spring tastings of the latest vintage at the end of April. As the ‘en primeur’ tastings of young samples by critics, commentators and merchants confirmed, 2021 is a comparatively weaker and uneven vintage for reds, even if very good for the whites (which are made in much smaller volumes).
Here’s my report of how the weather during the Bordeaux growing season left a fairly indelible mark on the style of the wines and the volumes produced.
In our recent photo journals about the harvest this autumn, we included just a couple of pictures of other Bordeaux estates. We covered the 2021 white harvest at Bauduc, and separately the red and rosé harvest one here in case you missed them. As it’s still no simple matter to travel, we thought we’d bring you some images of what went on in other vineyards. Even if you have little interest in wine production, at least it makes a change from the news in general.
Speaking of which, you may have read in the press that there’s going to be a shortage of wine in the UK this Christmas. There are some serious obstacles, that’s true, but for now rest assured that we do have stock in London, ready and waiting should you need it. Take a look at ‘All wines’ for our stuff, including mixed cases, and ‘Other châteaux’ for those from friends and colleagues.
Is 2020 another top Bordeaux vintage and what are the chances of a strong ‘en primeur’ campaign after the success of the 2019s?
(A shorter version of this post forms the basis of my article on the primeurs for Harpers Wine & Spirit, June issue. I’ll be updating the recommended wines below as I continue to tasteat the leading châteaux.)
A little over a year ago I was speaking to Ronan Laborde, the new President of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux. Would the top châteaux still try to sell their new vintage a year before it was bottled, when all the tastings had been put on hold and the world was in lockdown? Why the rush when the wines have another 12 months in barrel, and was it the right thing to do during a pandemic?
‘Gavin,’ he replied, ‘it is in the DNA of the grands crus of Bordeaux to sell en primeur.’ And that was that, really. I duly received my invitation for a properly distanced press tasting of 2019 barrel samples from the UGCB – an association of 131 leading estates – at the Grand Hotel in the city for the first week of June. A week before that event, Château Pontet Canet announced that their price for the 2019 was 31% less than for the 2018. The 2016 had been released at €108 per bottle, ex-Bordeaux negociant, and the 2018 at €84. The 2019 – an excellent vintage as far as I could tell – was to be €58. Game on.
