Bordeaux 2015 At Age Ten

BY NEAL MARTIN | JUNE 3, 2025

Introduction

Bleach. The Dreaming. Meddle. Plastic Letters. Modern Life Is Rubbish. The Man Who Sold The World. In The Garden. Unhalfbricking. Good Kid, m.A.A.d City. Porgy and Bess…

What do these albums have in common?

They all preceded a bona fide classic. Those aforementioned albums are all great in their own right. Some music fans might regard them as being superior. That is a debate for another day, but what cannot be denied is that they are overshadowed by the follow-up. One point for naming each one; answers at the end of this report.

A similar fate befell the 2015 Bordeaux vintage. Its wines were hailed upon release like the aforementioned albums, yet the applause had barely died before the wines were playing second fiddle to the 2016s. Now with ten years on the odometer, it is time to revisit the 2015 vintage and see whether it is full of hidden gems or never quite passed muster.  

The Growing Season

Though 2015 is often regarded as the best since 2010, the growing season was actually quite complicated and certainly no shoo-in. January and February were rainy and replenished the depleted water table. March was the warmest since 1880. Bud-burst was retarded by low nighttime temperatures, and the vines’ pent-up energy meant that the landscape exploded into green at the beginning of April, some shoots growing up to five inches in a day. However, dry conditions slowed growth, as rainfall was 70% and 60% below average in April and May, respectively. Warm temperatures, up to 24°C, brought quick, even flowering. This was followed by a period of strong heat, some 3.2°C above normal, along with record sunlight hours. Eleven consecutive days in excess of 30°C began stressing the vines before the season took a different direction with two violent storms on July 22 and 24. Temperatures remained high in August, but there was much-needed rainfall, clustered in three or four deluges, adding up to 140 mm on the Right Bank and 100 mm in Pessac-Léognan. Growers found that this evened out véraison, which was completed by August 10, and vines redirected their energy toward bunches instead of foliage.

At harvest time, dry conditions meant there was little risk of rot. The dry whites were picked between August 28 and September 11, with cool nights benefiting the Sauvignon Blanc in particular. But on September 12, the remnants of Tropical Storm Henry delivered a 48-hour deluge followed by several more days of rain. Normally, depressions barge across the region from west to east; in this case, a warm southerly breeze that descends from the leeward side of the Alps—known as a föhn—steered the storm away from Bordeaux, limiting rain in many appellations to 40 mm. Alas, the föhn’s protective influence did not quite extend to Saint-Estèphe, which received 100 mm of rain and consequently had a shorter picking window than other appellations. Many properties delayed picking, instead of expediting as many did in 1999, allowing time for berries to recover from the wet spell and avoid swelling and potential dilution.

The lion’s share of Merlot was picked between September 20 and October 1 during sunny days and cold nights, mostly over the final four days of the month. Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon were harvested almost simultaneously from October 8 under blue skies and a cooling northerly breeze, and harvest was more or less complete by October 22.

How The Wines Were Tasted