Bordeaux 2022: Weather Report
On this and the next two pages I detail the weather of 2022. If you wish to skip straight to my overarching thoughts on the wines, viewed in the context of the season, head for page five.
It is not unusual to begin my weather report with the events of the previous season, and 2022 Bordeaux is no exception. We begin with a brief look back to 2021.
The 2021 season was not exactly short on rain. Winter rains top up groundwater tables, providing an essential water source for the vines during dry periods to come. Having said that, Peter Sisseck of Château Rocheyron pointed out that the summer rains of 2021 will also have contributed to the good supply of groundwater. In the story of the 2022 season, it is likely that these reserves of groundwater played an essential role.
One other point that I expected to hear discussed during my visit to the region to taste the 2022 vintage was the bounce back from the frost of 2021. A poor crop because of frost one year is often compensated for by a larger crop the following year. To my surprise nobody in Bordeaux even mentioned this, unless I asked specifically about it. I suspect this is because any compensation made by the vines was soon lost in the melting pot of 2022, when summer weather pushed the yields ever downwards, potentially masking any compensatory increase in the crop.
Otherwise, the 2021/2022 winter was mild, with warmer than average temperatures in January and March. Indeed, February was the only month in the entire year when the temperatures in the region were lower than the average. Given that this thirty-year-average is based on three very warm decades, from 1991 to 2020, including numerous super-hot years including 2003, 2011, 2018, 2019 and 2020, this is extremely worrying. I suspect we have many warmer vintages ahead of us.
