Bordeaux 2018: Weather Report
The story of the 2018 growing season will invite inevitable comparisons with 2016; there are just too many similarities to do otherwise, and the fact that these two vintages sit like bookends around 2017, a vintage marked by a significant spring frost which caused extensive damage and slashed yields, also has some sort of symmetrical appeal. Well, it does to me, anyway.
The most obvious common trait in 2016 and 2018, taking a bird’s eye view of the two vintages, is that both growing seasons are split into two distinct halves (this would be a good moment to insert a football analogy, but as I don’t know my Maradona from my Messi I should probably steer clear of this). Both years started off very wet, with abundant rain, this rather depressing first-half persisting all the way through spring and early summer, before coming to a spluttering end in late June. At this point the clouds parted and the region experienced a second-half renaissance, an almost unparalleled run of warm and mostly dry weather which persisted for three months. It was sunshine and smiles all round (well, nearly all round) for Bordeaux.
The idea that 2018 might be another 2016 would not be bad news. As I wrote in my recent review of the vintage at two years, 2016 was one of the most successful vintages for the region in the past few decades, producing delicious wines of fresh-fruit flavour, modest alcohols and a delightful sense of balance. If the 2018 growing season mirrors that of 2016, as indeed it appears to, the implication is that the wines will also offer similar quality. As is often the case the truth is rather more complicated, as while there are similarities between the two vintages, there are also stark differences, both in the growing seasons and, inevitably, in the wines.
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