Bordeaux 2021 Revisited in 2025
In Bordeaux, both the weather and the wines can throw up surprises.
Only a few years ago it looked as though the region could not put a foot wrong, as a sequence of partly or wholly successful vintages which ran from 2014 though to 2020 resulted in many châteaux turning out an unbroken (or almost unbroken) run of superlative wines. Why do I add the qualifying ‘almost’? In the main because of the 2017 vintage, the most obvious fly in this Bordeaux ointment, although coming back to the wines of 2017 at seven-to-eight years of age it appears many of them – at least those that escaped or coped well with the frost – are drinking surprisingly well.
Then came 2021, a vintage made in the shadow of the Covid-19 epidemic, and which provided Bordeaux-watchers with a masterclass in vineyard afflictions.
The 2021 Vintage
The season opened with a serious frost, certainly comparable to that seen in 2017, if not significantly worse. Whereas the weather which came later in the 2017 season had been fairly benign, however, 2021 followed up with persistent rain through May, June and July – with just a week of good weather for the flowering, the vintage’s one saving grace – therefore encouraging the development of mildew not just on the leaves but even on the developing fruit. Thereafter the cool summer weather did little to help the vines pick up the pace, and in fact the miserable weather grumbled on through August and September, the harvest as a result a rather soggy affair.
Early tastes of the wines at during the primeurs, and again after bottling, only proved what the weather reports already told us. This was a vintage of very modest wines. While the quality was not at the low level seen in the 2013 vintage, it was surely the weakest vintage since then.
And yet, during the course of the four years that have since passed, a couple of noteworthy features of the 2021 vintage have piqued my interest.
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