Superlative New Bordeaux Vintage Gives Positive Twist to 2020
James and his team have tasted over 1,300 Bordeaux barrel samples, including this one from Chateau Mouton Rothschild.
We all know why the 2020 vintage will be so memorable for us because of the pandemic, but the vintage in Bordeaux will also be remembered because it produced so many outstanding wines under such challenging circumstances – from logistical shortages to severe drought conditions. In fact, 2020 is the third outstanding vintage in a row for Bordeaux and marks perhaps the first time the region has experienced such a high-quality trilogy of superlative years.
JamesSuckling.com rated 1,302 barrel samples from the 2020 vintage over the last six weeks and conducted almost 40 Zoom calls with chateau owners and winemakers, and the story behind the 2020 vintage is a fantastic one. It was our biggest en primeur tasting ever and perhaps the biggest for any wine critic. The outstanding quality of so many of the wines highlights the genius of Bordeaux viticulture and winemaking as well the incredible human effort and collective energy it takes to make so many terrific quality wines.
“You had a new challenge every day, and it could be climatic and it could be sanitary,” Veronique Sanders said during a Zoom call a few weeks ago. The general manager of Chateau Haut-Bailly made one of the best wines of the vintage. “We had to keep our team working and that could be a challenge. Imagine what it was like when France was in lockdown in May and April!”
Sanders said that Haut-Bailly had to hire an extra 50 people to work in the vineyards last spring, including some from outside the wine sector, but that those employees enjoyed the work and being out in the natural environment. And they were ever so proud of what they achieved. “Nature was the saving grace for us and it helped us move,” she said. “It was fantastic to have it and the result is fabulous. The people who were there [in their vineyards], we owe them a lot, but they also enjoyed it.”
I think that we are all going to be excited with what is finally bottled in Bordeaux from 2020. The reds show complex and intense aromas as well as bright fruit character, but also floral and earth undertones. This is something you don’t see in such young wine resting in barrels or other vessels in cellars. They also have intense yet fine tannins and relatively fresh acidity. They are wines that can be consumed relatively young but will age very well after bottling.
Some wines are really exceptional quality. In fact, I rated 10 wines with possible perfect scores, 99-100. That’s the third highest number of top wines in the last 10 years for my en primeur tastings for Bordeaux and one of the highest in my career of tasting Bordeaux from barrel, which I began doing in 1983. By comparison, 2019 had eight wines with 99-100 ratings, and 2018 just four. About 91.6 percent of the 1,302 wines rated for this report were potentially 90 points or more. Just over 14 percent were potentially 95 points or more.
“We think that the 2020 is the best of [the] trilogy,” said Florence Cathiard, the owner of Chateau Smith Haut-Lafitte, who made one of her best wines ever. “It has the structure and the typicity of the 2018 and the aromatics of the 2019. So it takes the best of both.”
The best wines of 2020 also have a ripeness but slightly less alcohol than 2019 and 2018 because many wineries picked earlier and extracted less during fermentations and macerations, using lower temperatures and less pump-overs. It’s all about softer winemaking in Bordeaux now, which is a throwback to the 1980s but in a modern way.
“It was crazy, crazy,” said Saskia Rothschild, the head of the famous first-growth Chateau Lafite-Rothschild as well as Duhart-Milon and Evangile. The Lafite only has about 12.8 percent alcohol, a good degree less than most recent high-quality vintages. “Everyone told us 2020 was hot and we measured the vats and they were like what we knew in the 1990s and 1980s. It’s very surprising. It’s about that paradox [of the vintage] that we talked about.”
The paradox is that Bordeaux experienced one of its most severe droughts ever during the summer, with almost 50 days of no rain – or only a few drops from about mid-June to mid-August. Most winemakers worried that they would have a high-alcohol harvest with shriveled and sugar-rich grapes. Yet the wet weather during most of the first half of the year enabled the best vineyards with great soils to maintain moisture. They were the terroirs high in clay or limestone that traditionally make the best wines in the region.
“The vineyards were green during the summer despite the dryness,” pointed out Edouard Moueix, who made some sensational wines at his Pomerol estates of Chateau Lafleur Petrus, Trotanoy and Hosanna. “Even our gardens were green and full of flowers.”
Some large amounts of rains came in mid-August but not enough to negatively affect the quality of the grape crop. The most important precipitation arrived in late September, but many of the top names on the Right Bank had finished their harvest or were very close to ending. This early and dry harvest delivered some impeccable merlot in many estates – even in the Medoc, where cabernet sauvignon reigns. This is why I have a slight preference for Pomerol in 2020 among all the superb wines produced. In fact, a large percentage of my top-rated wines were from this appellation. I also enjoyed a few outlier appellations such as Castillon Cotes de Bordeaux, Fronsac and Moulis-en-Medoc for values.
“I have to say it is a merlot year,” said consulting enologist Hubert de Bouard, the owner along with his family of the famous St.-Emilion winery Chateau Angelus, which made one of its most balanced and subtle reds in memory. “The merlot is great in the Medoc too.”
But don’t write off wines with a predominance of cabernet sauvignon in their blends. The cabernets were much smaller than normal with thick skins, so the rains at the end of September did not negatively affect them in many areas or properties. Moreover, the cabernets in Pessac-Leognan were super in 2020, which is why three out of my top 10 wines were from the appellation. “The small amount of rain in September released the tannins,” added Cathiard. “It helped the wine.”
I asked many winemakers over Zoom if they thought the weather during the last three years was the new normal for Bordeaux. During these years, they experienced mild and wet winters and springs as well as frosts, not to mention pressure from early-growing-season diseases such as mildew. But they all said they had grown accustomed to the recent weather patterns and that the early growing of the vineyards enabled them to pick earlier and avoid some of the negative effects of rains in late September or October.
“It’s too early to say that this cycle will continue in the future, but for sure temperatures are increasing so global warming is a reality,” said Jean-Philippe Delmas, manager of Chateau Haut-Brion and La Mission. The Haut-Brion is one of the wines of the 2020 vintage. “The growing process starts earlier than before so the risk of frosts is higher than before. Because we start earlier and we have rain, we have to fight against mildew more than before. So it’s a challenge. Then after the spring we have more and more drought periods. So I don’t know how we will manage … the climate for the last 20 years has changed.
“If you remember the vintages of the 1980s and 1990s, we have less and less poor vintages [by comparison] and we have more and more great vintages,” he added. “So this is the effect of the global warming process and the greenhouse effect.”
These earlier harvesting times are most apparent in dry white wine production. Many in 2020 started picking parcels of sauvignon blanc in mid-August, when the grapes still had some natural acidities, and combined with the slightly later picking of white grapes resulted in wines with lively structure and rich and ripe fruit flavors. The semillons were more difficult, especially with sweet wine production. The development of noble rot was slow and small due to the dry conditions, and very few high-quality sweet wines were made in 2020.
“This was No. 3 in terms of early picking the white grapes for the harvest,” said Delmas, who made two superb whites with Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion. “We started the harvest the 19th of August. If you are looking for harmony and freshness, you have to start early [and] starting in August is almost common now.
“We are really happy with the sauvignon blanc,” he said. “We have this freshness with acidity and also the fatness.”
The top-name winemakers in Bordeaux also were just as thoughtful and precise in their winemaking. They understood the grapes were charged with tannins, so they were prudent with their fermentations and macerations in order to not over-extract. Most mentioned that they limited pump-overs and kept temperatures lower during fermentation. In addition, many mentioned how they used less new wood barrel for aging their 2020s, trying other vessels such as amphora or large oak casks instead.
The question now is if 2020 is better than 2019 or 2018. My impression after tasting so many barrel samples is that it is certainly better than 2018 and at least at the same level as 2019 in quality. I will have to wait and see the wines in bottle to finally decide how they compare with 2019. “It’s something between ’18 and’19 even if it is none of them,” said Philippe Bascaules of Chateau Margaux, which made a fantastic wine. “The vintages are changing in Bordeaux and it’s difficult to find a vintage like that,” he added. “In 10 years we will see how to put all these vintages on the line.”
One thing that hasn’t changed is pricing in Bordeaux – it’s confusing. The few estates that have released on the market have both increased and decreased prices. However, those estates that compared their 2020 prices to current wines in the market are selling better. For example, Angelus increased its price by 13 percent and reportedly didn’t sell very well. Liv-ex, the fine wine exchange based in London, noted that the 2019, 2016, 2014 and 2009 (all excellent wines for Angelus) were currently less expensive than the 2020. The word on the street is that it sold well once it received a 100-points rating from another wine critic. Regardless, it doesn’t make much sense to buy a wine in barrel at the moment for many people if the same quality wine is available from other top vintages already in bottle. Meanwhile, a few estates dropped their prices by a few percentage points, including big names such as Pavie and Pavie Decesse and some lesser known ones.
I believe that 2019 was a great success for Bordeaux and it created incredible goodwill for France’s famous wine region. Whether the positive vibes continue with 2020 remains to be seen but so far it doesn’t look like it. “We feel that there is interest in this vintage,” Ariane Khaida, director of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild and its sister estates of Clerc-Milon and d’Armailhac, said during a Zoom call about a month ago. “For sure we don’t want to break the great dynamic we had last year for all of the Bordeaux region. This is key, and we have to find the right way [with pricing].”
In the end, and as usual, the market will decide if the prices are right or wrong. Regardless, the 2020 vintage is a super quality one, producing some extraordinary wines as well as outstanding quality across all appellations from simple Bordeaux to Pomerol. It’s a year for all of us to remember its many challenges.
– James Suckling, editor in chief
The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated for this report by James and other tasters at JamesSuckling.com. They include many of the latest releases not yet available on the market, but which will be available soon.
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