Bordeaux 2024: a lawless year
Earlier this month, I spent almost two weeks in Bordeaux, tasting the region’s nascent 2024s. I’ve written before about some of the quirks of Primeurs – as the region puts on a show for the world’s wine trade.
This was by far the hardest vintage I’ve tasted and assessed en primeur: styles vary massively, quality can be questionable, and the conditions that produced it were complex. Trying to digest it all and turn it into something cogent was more challenging than ever. I had expected the wines to be close to those of 2021, but they really aren’t. I liked a lot of the 2021s, a lighter style that aligned perhaps more closely with my palate versus blockbuster vintages. That vintage also offered significantly more consistency than 2024, where some of the wines offer a severity, a mouth-puckering acidity and/or green tannins that simply make for wine that isn’t good. But there are also some genuinely good wines, some serious and age-worthy, more that are lighter yet balanced and vibrant.
As I wrote in my vintage overview (which is now live on FINE+RARE), this is a year where you absolutely had to look beyond the headlines. There is no way to generalise: as several winemakers noted during our tastings, there were many different ways for producers to handle the (many) challenges that 2024 threw at them.
Some have argued it’s a vintage defined by money – by how much you could afford to lose, by how much you could afford to put into the little you did make. And, while there’s no doubt it was harder for more modest estates where the economics of making wine is more instant, it’s not that simple. Quality doesn’t align neatly with classifications, reputations or appellations. When it comes to 2024, the rules simply don’t apply.
My favourites from the vintage:
Cheval Blanc
Le Pin
Laroque
Montlandrie, La Petite Eglise and Eglise-Clinet from the Durantou stable
Ausone
Figeac
Clos de Sarpe
The whites, in particular, from the Lafleur stable
Montrose
Palmer
Brane-Cantenac
Ch. Margaux and Pavillon Blanc
Haut-Brion (Rouge) and La Mission Haut-Brion Blanc
Domaine de Chevalier Blanc and Rouge
