I write this, as is my now annual ritual, as the TGV races through the fields of southwestern France towards Paris. I’m on my way back from a particularly fascinating period tasting the 2024 Bordeaux en primeur samples – first in Bordeaux and then in and around the vineyards of the left and right-banks.
I have tasted close to 400 wines and have amassed close to 100 pages of tasting notes.
In a slight modification to the ritual, before boarding the train I quickly scribbled down 10 points on this most complex of vintages. My aim is to run briefly through each of them in what follows and to have this wrapped before the TGV pulls into Gare Montparnasse. For once in my life, I’m almost hoping for a temporary blip in the famous reliability of the French rail system – a thought I’d probably be better to keep to myself (my fellow travellers all look like they’re in rather more of a hurry than I am).
So, now that we’re out of the city and I am briefly surrounded by vineyards again, let’s get going … What can be said about Bordeaux 2024 in general terms?
1. An extremely heterogeneous vintage
There is no mistaking the uneven character of the vintage. It comes from a variety of sources – most, though by no means all, of them meteorological. The key factors here are twofold: the unprecedented mildew pressure (unprecedented in its early timing, its intensity, and its endurance) and, for those who experienced it, the long and uneven floraison (flowering) leading to coulure (partial or failed pollination) and millerandage (uneven bunch formation) and, in turn, to uneven ripening of the grapes (between and even within bunches). A third factor is the fickleness of nature, above all in a context of climate weirding (deréglement climatique) – and hence the uneven exposure (at the appellation, vineyard, and plot level) to these effects. And a fourth, that we return to in more detail presently, is the uneven capacity (human and financial) to respond to these challenges.
2024 was an extremely costly vintage to produce; and the means to absorb such costs are far from evenly distributed, above all today.
The result is a vintage, qualitatively speaking, that is pyramid-shaped in form – with the bottom of the pyramid a very long way from the summit.
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2. A farmer’s vintage
It is easy to forget that winemaking is, at its core, a form of agriculture. But that does not make it any less true, above all in a year like 2024. Anyone reliant for their fruit and vegetables on the fields and orchards of Northern Europe will know already that 2024 was difficult, very difficult – regardless of the agricultural domain in question.
It follows, logically, that 2024 is, perhaps first and foremost, a farmer’s vintage.
We have already established that the two principal challenges facing winemakers-as-farmers in 2024 were mildew, on the one hand, and uneven pollination, flowering and fruit-set, on the other.
Yet, interestingly, the type of challenge that each pose is rather different.
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