Book Excerpt: The Complete Bordeaux Vintage Guide One Hundred and Fifty Years from 1870-2020

BY NEAL MARTIN | APRIL 21, 2023

My new book, The Complete Bordeaux Vintage Guide One Hundred and Fifty Years from 1870-2020, was published recently. Here are just a few words to inform readers how it came about and what to expect. The book does what it says on the tin. However, only when you delve inside will you see that it is much more than an ordinary vintage guide.

To be frank, this 528-page book was never planned. Its genesis lies way back on my original Wine-Journal site (2003-2006), which included summaries of growing seasons, each with a chosen attendant event, song and film that aimed to anchor each vintage to that specific twelve months of history and evoke a personal connection between reader and vintage. The traffic data proved that it was always one of the most popular parts of that site.

Having mothballed the column in 2006, it gathered dust on my hard drive until I began tinkering like a bored child during lockdown. Like my previous tome on Pomerol, this book grew organically and soon, a vision coalesced of what it could be. First and foremost, it should guarantee as much detailed information as possible, irrespective of how old or esoteric or disparaged the vintage. It would be very egalitarian in that respect. Personal recollections of bottles would augment each vintage tasted over 25 years, though I must emphasize that it includes no formal tasting notes or scores - you have to subscribe to Vinous for those. My craving for completeness drove me on. I began researching the darkest recesses of forgotten vintages that paradoxically can be more engrossing than those revered, if only from a meteorological point-of-view rather than the wines they begat.

That would have made a decent book, albeit not a particularly original one. There’s enough wine literature where authors forget that a book must be interesting and entertaining. The book came to life when I began writing explanatory paragraphs pertaining to the events, films and songs. But I foolishly underestimated the task at hand: 450 individual research subjects on an intentionally diverse array of topics, from Krakatoa to ABBA, Eisenstein to Eilish, Bobby Fisher to Kendrick Lamar via Tarzan and Tiger Woods. At times it felt like a microcosm of our world and a juxtaposition between the predictable/cyclical nature of the vineyard and the roiling churn of life - the chaos beyond vineyard boundaries. Despite striving for eclecticism, connections between historical events and wine became apparent, perhaps most obviously during wartime, but also in terms of economic prosperity. You could join the dots regarding the progress made in racial and gender equality. Another decision that I made was that the growing seasons needed context. So, I researched the history of Bordeaux from the 19th century, summarizing major viticultural events of each decade, from phylloxera to inaugural château-bottlings, the devastating freeze of 1956 to the rise of Robert Parker.

The book is blessed with a fabulous design courtesy of Luke Bird, partly inspired by the opening titles of the Netflix series Ozark. The embossed cover is dazzling – definitely one that will stand out on your bookshelf! There are also just over a dozen photographs donated by châteaux, each chosen to evoke that period of time. Like my previous tome, look carefully, and you will find Easter eggs littered in its pages, and of course, I had to include one Essex joke. I hope it is a book that you can randomly open at any page, and it draws you in.

Whereas “Pomerol” was self-published and limited to a single run, this book is published through Hardie Grant Publishing. It will be widely available in all good bookshops and Internet retailers, including Amazon, which offers the book on Kindle, from mid-April (though I just discovered that Amazon has pushed back the delivery date to early May.)