Bordeaux 2023 at Two Years: Bottles to Buy
With the publication of my final set of tasting notes, concerning Sauternes and Barsac, I have put the 2023 Bordeaux vintage to bed. Other than the occasional appearance as a Weekend Wine choice, or perhaps in future vertical tastings, this is the last time 2023 Bordeaux will receive any attention on Winedoctor for a while. The next time this vintage is likely to show its face will be when the wines hit ten years of age, in 2033. With any luck, Dionysius and Bacchus willing, I will still be around taste them.
As 2023 Bordeaux rides off into the proverbial sunset, the image of rider and steed (perhaps one of the beasts so often out working the vineyards when the primeurs week comes around) fading into a hazy dot on a distant horizon, it is nevertheless not a vintage which I will allow to fade from my mind.
Indeed, keen Bordeaux drinkers could be well served by keeping some knowledge of this vintage, and its qualities, tucked away in a dusty corner of the cerebral cortex. Especially those drinkers who like the overarching style, which is gentle, vibrant and lithe, the wines largely of modest textures and low alcohols, all draped demurely across a ripe tannic frame. In other words, a classically restrained but also accessible style of good quality Bordeaux that we have not seen for a long time.
Why? Why hold on to some memory of 2023?
For the simple reason that these wines are going to hang around in the marketplace for a long time. Which means for the next decade we will see wines of the 2023 vintage pop up from time to time on merchant lists, in auction catalogues, in sales, and on the carte des vins of your favourite restaurant. There could, just maybe, be some good buying opportunities ahead.
