The 2015 vintage is an extremely exciting year for Bordeaux, producing wines with exuberant fruit character and plenty of tannin backbone to give them form and tension. They have a unique ripe fruit character that remains cool and fresh. They have a dynamism that make me want to buy some.
Here is a list of my Top 100 2015s. Think of it as a my personal wish list. I am going to buy some of them as en primeur to assure availability and bottle size. All my ratings for about 750 Bordeaux 2015 are also available in handy lists by score and alphabetically by château.
To read my tasting notes for the 750 wines, you will need to be a subscriber. I tasted from March 15 to April 4 in Bordeaux in châteaux, in négociant tasting rooms, and in my tasting room. All the wines are scored with a two-point scale using the 100-point system. This underlines that they are unfinished, barrel samples. I gave eight perfect scores of 100-100 in total: Canon, Lafleur, La Mission Haut-Brion, Margaux, Pétrus, Trotanoy, Pavie and Ausone. But many other amazing wines are available in 2015.
Of course, not all the wines produced in 2015 are outstanding quality. And my ratings are for barrel samples. So qualities can be different once the wines are in bottle. The 2015 vintage had complications with interspersed rains in August, September, and October, and it was particularly difficult for wineries north of the appellation of Margaux. Yet, most of the top names made outstanding wines due to meticulous viticulture and harvesting methods as well as judicious winemaking.
The vintage is not homogenous like a great year. Some châteaux made wines better than 2009 or 2010. Others made wines like their 1996 or 2004. Some respected names (Médoc) produced wines less good than in 2014. Small producers in the Right Bank made wines as good or better than highly regarded ones. But it’s fascinating all the same.
To make the best wines, producers needed to extract less during fermentations and macerations and use less new wood in general. It was all about making wines in 2015 with finesse and length – real Bordeaux. It seems that is the aim of most winemakers with their 2015s. Let’s see how the wines improve in barrel over the next 12 to 14 months.
Merlot-based wines are amazing quality and the highlights of my tastings of about 750 wines over three weeks in Bordeaux. The best appellations are Pomerol and St. Emilion, although Pessac-Léognan and Margaux follow closely behind. Lots of smaller appellations also excelled including Lalande-de-Pomerol and Fronsac.
Top châteaux in the Médoc in general made very high quality wines despite some problems with rain before the harvest and at the end. But wineries north of Margaux had to contend with a lot more rain than other parts.
I can’t think of another vintage that produced wines like this in my career as a wine critic, spanning 33 vintages of Bordeaux from barrel. It is not in the league of such great recent years as 2010 or 2009, or even 2005. In those vintages, it was an across-the-board success and the grape growing season was great everywhere in Bordeaux.
But it’s another outstanding vintage for Bordeaux. It’s one I am going to buy myself, because of the unique quality of so many wines. So many exciting wines were made – red, dry white and sweet. Some wines are the estate’s best ever.
There’s something in the best wines that remind me of the great wines of the 1980s such as 1982 or 1989 that I tasted from barrel as a young wine critic/journalist. They have a neoclassical style not emphasizing massive concentration or wood but length and balance with strength.
It’s obviously hard to generalize about the vintage and compare to past years. Although I didn’t taste it from barrel, the wines on the Right Bank could turn out to be like the excellent 1971, but even better. Wines such as Pétrus, Lafleur and Cheval Blanc from this vintage are classic and still fantastic to drink. It was marked by hot weather and rains before the vintage. It was clearly a great Right Bank year.
The Right Bank 1998 vintage is another year that comes to mind, and rains also affected the quality of the Left Bank wines. However, the 2015s are not as traditional or as tannic in style and the Left Bank produced better wine in 2015.
I like the idea of a new 1995 for the Right Bank, Pessac-Léognan, and Margaux and 1996 for the Médoc north of Margaux. The latter year was rain-affected and only made outstanding wines in the Northern Médoc. The 1995 vintage made excellent wines in Bordeaux, particularly Right Bank.
Obviously, comparisons and generalizations for the vintage at large are very difficult. Perhaps this is why I am so intrigued by this vintage?
The wines of 2015 are wonderful in so many ways. I like the fact that they show their terroirs and are not excessively marked by the ripeness of the year. Most producers said that their alcohols are under levels of Bordeaux’s last top vintage – 2010. Yet the tannins are abundant and ripe. Acidities are average. One producer in Pomerol described the 2015s as “warm inside and cold outside.”
In the end, I really enjoyed tasting the 2015s from barrel this year and they seemed to highlight an axiom offered by the late, great winemaker Émile Peynaud when I started tasting from barrel in Bordeaux in 1983. He said that great wines were great straight from the barrel. And I felt that way in Bordeaux tasting so many of the 2015s. It’s an outstanding year with charisma.
Photos from top to bottom: Tasting at Tour Saint Christophe with owner Peter Kwok; Château Ausone St.-Emilion 2015; Château Canon St.-Emilion 2015; Château Palmer Margaux 2015 and Château d’Yquem Sauternes 2015
