I had an interesting Zoom conversation with Hubert de Boüard, the famous consulting enologist of Bordeaux whose family also owns St.-Emilion’s Chateau Angelus. I tasted about 100 of his wines from the 2019 vintage in my tasting room in Hong Kong. The barrel samples were jet-freighted from Bordeaux and they showed very well. I was impressed with the freshness of the wines and fine and linear tannins, and the wines seem at the same quality level as the 2018s, which were excellent.

I have known Boüard since the mid-1980s and he has always been forthright with his thoughts and views. Below are a few key points on video from our Zoom discussion. I found the most interesting being his thoughts on pricing on 2019 Bordeaux futures, which he thought may drop from 30 to 10 percent compared to 2018. I think it needs to be more if people are going to be interested in buying futures at this moment. I remember the financial market crisis in 2008 and some chateaux such as first growths cut their prices in half for the vintage as futures in 2009.

Boüard’s thoughts on the style of the wines of 2019 and the growing season for the vines for the vintage were also insightful. I hope to publish a report on my Bordeaux 2019 tastings so far early next week. I have rated about 300 wines.

– James Suckling, editor & CEO

This is part of an extensive en primeur tasting campaign being conducted by James, which has already covered 850 wines, with about 200 more to come. The reports are listed below:

Bordeaux en primeur first report: A potentially challenging vintage
Bordeaux en primeur second report: 850 notes and scores
Pricing report: Pontet-Canet’s decision to slash its prices