Bordeaux 2020 Revisited in 2024
Bordeaux has enjoyed an unprecedented run of successful vintages in recent years.
After a string of fairly dreary vintages including 2011, 2012 and 2013, the 2014 vintage was (too) warmly received by many, although other than the success in St Estèphe it never put much fire in my belly (I will be returning to the vintage with a report at ten years in the next few months). The 2015 vintage was better in some parts, such as Margaux, and the right bank, but other areas were patchy, to say the least.
Both vintages were false starts.
The run of successful vintages to which I allude started in 2016, a vintage of broad success and praised by all as a new classic. We will skip the frosted 2017 vintage, after which came 2018, the style rich and bold, 2019, a challenger to 2016’s crown, and then the ripe and svelte wines of 2020. That’s four good vintages out of five (or five out of seven if you continue on to include 2022), which is far from the norm in Bordeaux. I think you would have too look back exactly thirty years, and the five vintages from 1986 to 1990 (funnily enough, here it was 1987 that was disappointing, so an exact match), to find anything comparable.
One feature the vineyard and cellar managers of the late 1980s did not have to deal with, however, was a global pandemic. The lockdowns and restrictions of 2020 added to the more commonplace challenges faced by Bordeaux’s vineyard workers and cellar rats. And these restrictions continued on into 2021, so that when it was time for the primeurs the following April international travel was still verboten and I tasted the wines at my kitchen table. Tasting in Bordeaux can sometimes sap the spirit – drive, taste, drive, taste, drive, taste, repeat ad infinitum – but doing it at the kitchen table with no company other than 900 barrel samples was a fairly soulless process.
I will pause here, to give you time to put your tiny violins away. Thank you.
