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Bordeaux 1988

The Bordelais didn't know it at the time, but 1988 was the first of three very successful vintages for the region. It followed the troubled 1987 vintage, in which some 'charming' wines were produced, although many lacked depth and character, the vintage having been marred by rain at harvest time. As with all Bordeaux vintages, quality varied from commune to commune in 1988, with the greatest success enjoyed by the sweet wine appellations of Sauternes and Barsac. There were, however, also a number of very good reds from further north and from the right bank. Overall, however, the vintage has come to be regarded by most as slightly inferior to the two excellent vintages that followed.

Vintage Review

The October rains in 1987 that shaped that vintage continued in a sporadic fashion for many months, with figures showing above-average rainfall right through to June 1988. There was a need to get out into the vineyard and spray, to protect the vines from rot and mildew, very early on in this vintage. The flowering was later than usual and rather uneven, increasing the risk of uneven ripeness in the fruit come harvest time. It was not a prodigious beginning to the vintage.

It was the summer months, from June onwards, that began to raise the hopes for a good vintage. In contrast to the preceding months, July, August and September were drier then usual, although not particularly warm. It was not until October that the temperatures finally took off, a true Indian summer, encouraging the ripening of the fruit. As a result the best fruit was ripe with thick skin, thus giving the best wines plenty of colour and tannin. But it was not all straightforward; the effect of the uneven flowering was as expected, and there was significant variation between varieties, between vineyards, even between vines and bunches, of the maturity of the fruit. It was this feature of the harvest that was probably most responsible for the irregular quality reported by some critics.

This was apparently evident on the Médoc, where the wines at first seemed to lack flesh, although they gained body when in barrel and opinions of the wines became more favourable as they moved towards being bottled. Writing in Bordeaux, David Peppercorn admits that he thought the wines "less impressive than the 1986s at the same stage", but then finding the wines to have filled out and gained more harmony with time. As for Graves, the wines are generally regarded favourably, although of the leading estate Michael Broadbent wrote, after tasting 1988 Haut-Brion in 2000, in his tome Vintage Wine "the lowest key of the trio, '88, '89 and '90, and nothing like as splendid as the '85 and '82", which seems to put this estate's effort rather low down the list of favourable vintages from this decade. Nevertheless, despite this note of caution, there were many successes, and he described the vintage overall as very good and, importantly for us, undervalued.

For the right bank communes of St Emilion and Pomerol the vintage was certainly a success, the earlier-harvested Merlots of good quality, the wines as a result deep, rich and flavoursome. Here there was no comparison with 1986, which was not so successful here, and so perhaps the wines were viewed more favourably. Finally, in Sauternes and Barsac, there was perhaps more exuberant celebration. The wines were rich in botrytis, encouraged with damp weather and morning mists, with the October sunshine protecting the grapes from unhealthy grey rot. In the end the fruit was both ripe and fully botrytised, and most estates brought in many tries of high quality fruit throughout October and November. The vintage as a result produced wines that were not only ripe and characterful but which had delicious acidity and structure. Whereas the red wines pale a little in comparison to 1989 and 1990 in the eyes of many critics, no such fate should befall these wines, which are certainly the equal of these two subsequent vintages, and are viewed by many as superior. My experience of 1988 Sauternes would certainly support this point of view. (21/5/00, updated 11/8/08)