2024 Bordeaux En Primeur: The Razor’s Edge

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | APRIL 29, 2025

Left Bank: Saint-Estèphe | Pauillac | Saint-Julien | Margaux | Pessac-Léognan & Graves | Left Bank Satellites | Sauternes (Sweet and Dry)

Right Bank: Pomerol | Saint-Émilion | Right Bank Satellites

It’s no secret that Bordeaux endured a challenging growing season in 2024. Despite the ups and downs of a year that featured heavy rainfall and constant disease pressure, among other events, the most skilled winemakers found a way to make gorgeous wines. The 2024s are all over the place in terms of quality and style, so readers will have to be selective. Within that context, the very best wines have a lot to offer.

Tasting at Pontet-Canet with Technical Director Mathieu Bessonnet and proprietors Alfred and Justine Tesseron.

The 2024 Growing Season

Visitors arriving at a château in Bordeaux will be greeted with a pamphlet or brochure detailing the key points of the growing season, often with some sort of colorful title to the vintage. Data comparing variables such as rain and temperatures with historical averages, harvest dates, blends, alcohol levels and other more technical parameters like pH are not uncommon. There is no other region I know of that presents its wine in this manner. How much does all this matter? Not much, in my opinion.

I will offer a summary of the key events of 2024. I expect it won’t be that different from what readers will see elsewhere. After all, the weather is the weather. That said, as I get older, I place increasingly less value on things like weather data. The reason is simple. In previous generations, when wineries were in similar financial positions and had more or less the same means, when good to great vintages were the exception rather than the norm, weather did matter. Greatly. It was a determinant factor. The determining factor. Today that is no longer the case. For better or worse, wineries have vastly different financial resources and different ambitions as well. Weather is no longer the critical element in determining the quality of wines and therefore a vintage. People, their skill, their vision, their ambition, their access to technology, these are the qualities that determine the quality of wines today. Not monthly rainfall or temperatures above historical averages.

Technical Director Nicolas Glumineau turned out gorgeous 2024s at Pichon Comtesse, but his wines at Pez might be even more impressive because of the growth they have shown over the last few years.

The 2024 growing season got off to a very rainy start, a theme that would continue throughout the year. The 2023/2024 winter was quite wet. Warm temperatures arrived in spring, leading to early budbreak. Persistent rain caused early outbreaks of mildew that required constant vigilance. Under these circumstances, finding the right moment to enter vineyards was a challenge for tractors, given the consistently wet soils. Moreover, constant rain meant the treatment of the vines was easily washed away. "We have had mildew attacks before, but never as early in the year as in 2024," Technical Director Eric Kohler explained at Lafite-Rothschild. "Coulure was also an issue. Typically, we see this mostly in Merlot, but in 2024 we also had losses in the Cabernet Sauvignon.”

At this point, something else happened that had nothing to do with the weather, but that may turn out to be critical in shaping many wines. Despite significant price reductions, the 2023 en primeur campaign was a flop. Estates that depend on an influx of capital in the spring did not see those euros materialize. As a result, some properties were forced to reduce vineyard operations.

Set was largely good, with many properties reporting good potential yields at the time. Unfortunately, poor weather during flowering resulted in a high incidence of coulure (shatter) and millerandage (shot berries), both of which began to reduce the potential crop.