St Emilion Grand Cru Classé, 2025: The 2021 Vintage
I recently published a report looking at a scattergun selection of wines from the 2021 Bordeaux vintage, the one unifying feature (apart from the vintage, of course) being that the majority of wines were poured by the good people at London-based merchant Justerini & Brooks. The report featured more than 30 wines, admittedly including a handful of alternative wines from prior vintages.
Within that article I also mentioned some worthwhile finds in this vintage in St Emilion, in reference to wines tasted with the Association de Grands Crus Classés de St Emilion at their London tasting. The featured vintage at this annual event was 2021, and as usual these wines were accompanied by a selection from prior vintages (well mostly prior – one château brought a 2022). The opportunity to check in on these more mature wines alongside a young vintage is informative and welcomed, so kudos to the Association de Grands Crus Classé de St Emilion for taking their wines on the road in this manner.
I report on these wines here, and as is customary I have split my reviews across two articles. In this first instalment I publish my comments on the wines of the 2021 vintage, adding another twenty new notes and scores on the wines of this vintage to the Winedoctor database. In part two I will dive back into the alternative vintages, which include 2022, 2020, 2019, 2016 and 2015.
First though, a quick recap on the season, in case you did not see my preceding Bordeaux 2021 Revisited report, and don’t want to wade through my detailed 2021 Bordeaux weather report.
The 2021 Vintage
The season was notable for its spring frost, which caused extensive damage. Expensive frost-protection measures (helicopters, turbines, heaters and smudge pots – the latter probably sound inexpensive, but they aren’t) did little to prevent the impact of this frost, as the temperatures, which dropped as low as -7ºC in some parts, were too cold for these measures to provide adequate amelioration.
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