Bordeaux 2019: Weather Report
A decent report on the weather throughout the growing season is as important as ever in developing an understanding of the latest vintage. To read my weather report continue below, on this page and the next. For details purely of the harvest period, skip to page four. To understand the context within which this report has been written, go to page five. I would implore readers to at the very least read this latter part, as not only does it make clear which châteaux sent samples and will thus be included in this report, and which châteaux chose not to send samples (or sent them only to their preferred journalists and publications), it also provides some detail on how the publication of my regional reports will proceed, which is inevitably a little more complex than in other years.
Winter & Spring
Despite the many advances in winemaking Bordeaux has seen over the past century, and regardless of the not-quite-true maxim that ‘there are no bad vintages any more’, it is still the weather more than anything else that determines the style and quality of wine. And this is, of course, as true of Bordeaux as it is any region, perhaps more so. Indeed, the vineyards of Bordeaux have been hit by a number of weather-related phenomena in recent years, including the great wash-out of 2013, the frost of 2017 and the mildew of 2018, as Monsieur Propriétaire has thus far experienced.
The year started off mild and relatively dry, the winter months experiencing lower levels of rainfall than in most other recent years, save for the 2016-2017 winter, making this one of the driest winters for twenty years. While January was cool, February and March heralded the sort of weather that would be seen later in the year, with temperatures 4ºC above average in February, and 1ºC above average for March. The skies were clear and sunny, with the hours of sunshine registered in February setting a new record.
Please log in to continue reading: