Bordeaux 2024: The Wines
To recap following my summary of the weather in Bordeaux in 2024, this has been a challenging vintage for the Bordelais, conditions during spring and early summer encouraging mildew, and interfering with the flowering. Then, after a few weeks of warm weather during July and August, conditions deteriorated once more. Rain in September threatened dilution to the Merlots, and interfered with the harvest. Despite holding off as long as possible, the maturity of the fruit was borderline. As a consequence, those overseeing the vinifications were not just dealing with macerations, pressing, décuvage and the like, but in the majority of cases had to oversee the strictest of selections, followed episodes of saignée and chaptalisation, at least on selected vats.
This has naturally impacted the style and quality of the wines, but I must stress that while some knowledge of the season, the harvest conditions and the approach to the vinifications is useful in understanding why the wines of a vintage taste as they do, and perhaps point the way to where a vintage’s strengths and weaknesses might lie, it is never wise to prejudge a vintage based purely on the weather conditions. Yes, the 2024 vintage was challenging, with a season rather like those experienced during the 1980s and early 1990s, before climate change began to exert its influence on the region. But, as you may recall, those decades threw many pleasures our way, even from less renowned vintages.
In addition, while the season was something of a throwback to this era, the approach taken by winemakers in Bordeaux today remains extremely modern and, at the top end at least, well-funded. After a rude awakening in 2016 and the reminder delivered in 2018 most now deal with mildew very effectively (although some certainly missed the early start that was required in 2024), and the heterogeneity within the harvest can be addressed by efficient hand-sorting, both at the moment the bunches are snipped from the vine, but also on sorting tables, either placed among the vines or in the grape reception area outside the cellars. Then there are the more automated sorting methods, using densitometry and optical methods, technologies which simply did not exist three or four decades ago. And there is also a taste for risk; many top châteaux are owned by individuals or businesses with deep pockets, and they know the correct approach is to wait, to squeeze the necessary maturity from a growing season, rather than picking early merely to secure a crop.
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