Bordeaux 2023: The Harvest
I will look at the harvest in a little more detail below, but first a few words on volumes. Despite describing fat grapes and huge bunches above, this is another relatively small harvest for Bordeaux, the volume of the crop reported to be 383 million litres. Only two other vintages in recent times provided a smaller crop, these being 2017 and 2021; in both cases the cause was frost. The washout 2013 vintage, a year of little sun but an abundance of rain, provided a similarly small crop. Of note, the crop in 2022 was also modest (at 411 million litres) although here the volume was reduced by summer drought and dehydration, and the quality (unlike 2017 and 2021, which were rather heterogeneous) was broadly very good.
As well as being driven by the season, these recent figures reflect a downward trend in the size of the Bordeaux harvest in recent years, consequent partly upon the pursuit of lower yields concomitant with higher quality, and partly the pulling up of thousands of hectares of vineyards, in a program actively promoted by local authorities in order to reduce the wine glut. Of note, most of the vineyards pulled up would have tended to be farmed for higher rather than lower yields (for generic reds and rosés) which only amplifies the impact of this arrachage.
It is worth diving a little deeper into the 2023 data though, as within this small harvest many corners of Bordeaux have bucked the trend, bringing in a rather handsome crop. The yields reported by many of the most famous appellations – so from Margaux up to St Estèphe on the left bank, Pessac-Léognan and both St Emilion and Pomerol on the right bank – are relatively high (compared with recent years, maybe not with the 1960s and 1970s) and well above the yields in 2022 and 2021. So if yields are so good, why is the crop volume so small?
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