Bordeaux 2020 Vintage Report

This time last year we were reeling from being locked down for the first time, unable to travel even within the UK, but with the expectation (so naïve!) that normal service would resume after the summer. However, here we are again, twelve months on, tasting hastily airfreighted samples of the cream of the Bordeaux 2020 crop. A year on, the Bordelais have become very practiced at one-to-one Zoom tastings and had time to prepare introductions to their wines so, even though we can’t visit, we can at least get a broader flavour of the 2020 vintage from their perspective whilst tasting their wines on-line with them. A compromise, but not so bad after all.

2020 is yet another good year, the third in a row; this is becoming Bordeaux’s 21st Century reality; Bruno Borie of Ducru Beaucaillou calls it a ‘glorious triptych’. As truly awful vintages become ever rarer, thanks to warmer summers, new vineyard management and better technology in the cellars, the differences are more a question of nuance, of good / better / best; by our reading, 2020 is good / better, but not consistent enough across the board to qualify as best. What does seem to be apparent, both on tasting and talking with owners, is that 2020 is a terroir year, one in which the wines really show where they come from, where their soils and location speak more loudly than the vintage itself.

The Growing Season and the wines

A very wet but mild winter, which is fast becoming the norm, was followed by a warm spring, with early bud break in the last third of March. From the beginning of April right through to mid-June there was a lot of rain and humidity bringing with it the threat of disease, specifically mildew, which kept the proprietors on their toes for several long weeks. Speed of reaction was key in keeping the mildew under control and, for those who live on site, this meant they could be flexible and treat during the weekends if necessary; for larger properties, it was a question of mobilising teams of workers to come in and treat or risk losing some of the crop as the mildew was attacking both leaves and nascent grapes. For many, the disease put paid to part of their 2020 yield. Flowering was relatively early, at the end of May, and successful despite the weather conditions.

From mid-June onwards, the sun came out and it was hot – there were 54 consecutive days without rain between 18th June and 11th August, and even when the heat broke, it came as thunderstorms, with the concomitant risk of hail, rather than persistent rain. These brief storms in August offered salvation for many, preventing the vines from shutting down and re-invigorating them. A stormy end to August was followed by more hot, dry weather in September – often, the weather breaking in August leads to a sunny but cool Indian Summer, but not in 2020, where temperatures in September continued to top 30C – which caused remaining grapes on the vine to be concentrated, further reducing the yield for the later harvesters. A final storm on 21st September was to prove the dividing point between the Left and Right Banks; because of the early flowering, it was poised to be an early harvest and the Merlots on both banks were mostly picked by 21st September, however the harvesting of the Cabernets had yet to begin as growers waited for full physiological ripeness.

In terms of quality, Edouard Moueix commented that the full bunches allied with the hot weather led to the unusual phenomenon of the outer grapes of a cluster being ripe whilst the inner ones were some way off; they took the unusual step of removing some outer berries to allow the others a chance to come to full ripeness, and he attributes the complex and wide range of fruit and flower flavours in the resulting wines to this uneven ripening process. The tannins in the wines are plentiful and were easily extracted, leading to many producers shortening the maceration time to balance fruit and tannins and retain freshness. The combination of rain in August and cooler evenings in September allowed the ripe fruit to maintain fine acidity and the principal difference between individual wines depends on the harvest timing, particularly for Cabernet, where some were persuaded by the weather to harvest slightly too early, without allowing the internal berries in a bunch to ripen fully.

Left or Right Bank?

And so to the perennial question – Left or Right Bank? There is no doubt that Merlot, wherever it is grown, was extremely successful so long as it survived the ravages of mildew, although the challenge here was to keep the potential alcohol levels down as Merlot is prone to rapid sugar accumulation as it ripens in very hot weather. Cabernets required more work, as well as nerves, to get to full maturity and those who were tempted to harvest earlier, either to retain some freshness to counterbalance their full flavoured Merlots, or because they didn’t want to risk more rain, have ended up with patchier wines. Of the many wines we have already tasted, there has been a real mix of qualities, with some displaying holes in the mid palate – these won’t make old bones and we won’t be offering them – whilst others are gloriously rounded and complete, with the likelihood that they will be approachable relatively young but with all the necessary components to age well over the mid to longer term. In terms of most successful communes, Pauillac and Pomerol have both had an excellent year, with St Julien lying close behind on the Left Bank. St Emilion, being such a large appellation, is more mixed but the quality of the soils is perfectly reflected in the quality of the wines, with those on poorer sandy soils suffering in the heat whilst those on limestone and clay reaped the benefits of their fresh subsoils.

The Market

Historically, the third good vintage in a row suffers from buyers’ fatigue, as, buoyed up by enthusiasm, we gorge ourselves on the new releases as if starved of decent vintages in the previous decade – clearly not the case in the 21st Century when there are more good to excellent vintages than ever before. However, in 2019 many properties released a lower proportion of their stock than usual which in turn led to a scarcity of key wines at all price levels; combine this with an influx of new buyers to the market and it is very likely that demand this year will be equally as strong as those thwarted last year look to get a foot on the ladder. In terms of pricing, at the time of writing our vintage notes frost has already put its mark on the 2021 harvest, destroying the early-emerging buds at many properties on both sides of the river, and the risk remains present until after the so-called Ice Saints in early May; this may persuade growers to increase their prices in anticipation of a short harvest, although we sincerely hope that this is not the case. 2019s prices, on average 20% down on the 2018s, were clearly instrumental in the success of the campaign and we are hopeful that the proprietors will want to see a similar appetite for their 2020s. Only time will tell.

Nicola Arcedeckne-Butler MW
Director of Buying, Spring 2021