Event Horizon: Bordeaux 2024 Primeur

BY NEAL MARTIN | MAY 1, 2025

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

The château manager sits at the head of the marble table, his forlorn expression so permanent that he no longer has facial muscles to smile.

“Ladies and gentlemen. It’s serious,” he announces.

Cosette from accounts bursts into tears.

“We are at the brink. Last year’s campaign was like an episode of Black Mirror.”

“But sir…” a minion interjects. He is ignored.

“What were our primeur sales last year?”

“Ten.”

“Ten pallets?”

“No, ten cases. Five from a fake account in the Cayman Islands. One, a sympathy purchase from my mother. Two were from a Burgundy winemaker to use in her boeuf bourguignon. Two that were destined for British shores were destroyed by customs because an acute accent was missing on page 496 of the paperwork.”

“Does anyone have any ideas?”

“I just think…” stutters the minion. The château manager holds up a hand and invites Jean from marketing to speak.

“R&D tell me that they are making progress on the time machine that will transport us back to the 2009 primeur campaign, when people queued with blank cheques, smiles and naivety.”

“Good times,” the château manager says wistfully. “When will it be ready?”

“Minor teething problems. It malfunctioned and sent our 86-year-old cellarmaster to 3009…”

“Has he reported back?”

“He just said that there were fields of asparagus as far as the eye could see, and talking apes ruled the world. He made it down to the beach in Arcachon, where he found the crumbling pillars of Château Margaux in the sand. He fell to his knees and cried NOOOOOOOO!”

“That does not sound positive. How about the ‘Severance’ procedure?”

“We recruited a scientist from Château Lumon. He invented a microchip that is surgically implanted into merchants’ brains so that the instant they pass through passport control, they instantly forget last year’s prices…or the fact they didn’t sell anything. Tests also show they have no memory of the pain inflicted by previous primeur campaigns.”

“Sounds like we already have that in Bordeaux,” the minion pipes up. Cue uncomfortable shuffling in seats.

“We’ve also used the severance procedure on wine critics who are guided to a computer terminal filled with random numbers that they must form into the number 100 and attach it to the wine.” The minion has had enough. He bangs the table, stands up and begins his tirade.

“Do any of you know who I am?” Silence. “I’m your average Bordeaux buyer. I love Bordeaux. I bought en primeur for years. Nowadays, there is no financial rationale. Most of my recent purchases are worth less than when I bought them. Why should I buy 2024s when back vintages are available, when there are so many choices elsewhere, let alone tariffs that render it such a gamble? What is the point of a great wine if left unsold, if it is never drunk? How about pitching prices at one that opens my wallet? Slash prices to get primeur sales going, get wine flowing through the distribution system. Sure, you would have a backlog of mispriced back vintages, but they are not going to miraculously vanish. In the long term, however painful, the market will reach an equilibrium that makes primeur sales attractive. Forget the euphemisms, marketing-approved stories, and courting the wealthy because it aligns with your luxury brand image. Get corks popping. Get people talking about Bordeaux. Get them drinking. That’s the only way to rebuild that connection, especially with the younger generation drifting away from wine en masse, tannic reds most of all. Let’s find a solution, because the alternative is far bleaker than anything I’ve just said.”

“Obviously the severance procedure didn’t work on you,” the château manager huffs. At the back of his mind, the minion’s words ricochet around his head. Perhaps this is the year that he should consider a change in strategy? Or is it too late?

The Growing Season

“It was an Atlantic growing season.”

Words uttered numerous times to sum up the growing season. Or a poetic way of saying it was bloody rainy? The headline for 2024 was the biblical amount of rain that fell between October 2023 and June 2024 that cemented negative sentiment towards the season before it had begun. Prenatal infamy. Of course, headlines can be misleading. Such a complex season should be soberly examined in detail in order to consider the factors that underlie a wildly heterogeneous vintage.

As I have written before, the growing season does not begin at the start of the calendar year, but the previous October. According to the report published by Bordeaux University, October and November 2023 saw 436 millimetres (mm) of rain. The weather station at Bordeaux recorded 478 mm between January and March 2024, compared to an average of 323 mm. Temperatures were relatively mild, which has been the case for a number of years. There was just a little frost recorded in February, a month that Baptiste Guinaudeau at Lafleur avers is the most vital since this is when you must prep your vineyard, get it shipshape. Though the report states that budbreak was average, around April 6, most winemakers told me it was actually early—by three weeks, according to Jean-Charles Cazes at Lynch-Bages. April was warm, with temperatures peaking at over 30°C in the middle of the month. The mercury then fell from April 15, with minor frost damage, especially in the exposed eastern reaches of Bordeaux. These conditions retarded vine growth and in fact, despite the frequency of April showers, cumulative rainfall for that month was actually lower than average. It was a false dawn…

Here Comes the Rain Again

May saw 80% more rainfall than average: 126 mm, compared to a 1991-2020 average of 71 mm. This was accompanied by 20% to 30% less sunshine—nine days with less than three hours—and temperatures that averaged 1.7°C below normal, which slowed and variegated growth cycles. It was the relentlessness of the rain that was perturbing. Some 1,095 mm fell between October and May, compared to an average of 750 mm. The impact cannot be exaggerated. Some vineyards witnessed pale or reddened leaves, a sign of root asphyxiation, the roots essentially starved of oxygen in saturated soils, precluding vines’ ability to assimilate minerals and stymying growth, as well as risking parasites.

Finding windows to enter the vineyard when it wasn’t being deluged was exasperatingly difficult. Olivier Berrouet at Petrus divulged that it requires just 15 mm of rain to wash away a treatment, wash away all that arduous work, and compel exhausted vineyard workers back into the quagmire. It was dispiriting. Some estates on less gravelly or free-draining soils struggled to drive tractors. A couple resorted to manually spraying with atomisers—feasible in Burgundy with smaller tracts of vine, but futile when you have 100 hectares to spray repeatedly. Complicating matters was the timing of mildew pressure, insofar as it was so early, coinciding with primeurs last April. I remember a couple of winemakers remarking that they were already protecting fledgling leaves being attacked by mildew. Keep in mind that even if you do successfully spray, those leaves rapidly grow, and consequently, the new leaf area has no protection. Back you go into the vines. Some châteaux changed tactics amid these constant showers, forsaking organic viticulture and applying synthetic sprays. In most cases, this viticultural volte-face was inimical, compounding problems because henceforth, you were constantly chasing mildew spread. Bang goes years of hard work converting to organic, all for no reward.

One of the longest advocates and practitioners of biodynamic is Claire Villars-Lurton at Haut-Bages-Libéral in Pauillac. Two thousand twenty-four was a ruthless season that perhaps advantaged those who achieved equilibrium in the vines under Steiner’s tenets.

The consequences of this unprecedented rainfall vary depending on who you speak to. When I was in Washington, D.C. last May with a gaggle of Bordeaux winemakers, word was already spreading about vineyards decimated by mildew and writing off the crop in appellations such as Entre-Deux-Mers. Claire Villars-Lurton made the ominous warning that mildew is becoming more aggressive. She further pointed out that older vines tend to be more resistant. However, this was not the case in 2024. At the other extreme, some nonchalantly remarked that mildew had zero impact on final quality, batting away concerns since mildew affects volume, not quality. Of course, this is predicated on being able to eradicate bunches before they enter the vat room, and in 2024, mildew attack was not confined to easily remedied leaves, but also nascent bunches. Multiple factors determine the extent of damage: vine age, orientation, grape variety, etc. The variable that I would like to focus on is vineyard husbandry, differences between those that use synthetic protective sprays and others that are either organic or biodynamic.

Biodynamics

Without wishing to sound as if I am wallowing in the misery of others, one fascinating aspect of the vintage is how mildew spread in multifarious ways between estates. Notionally, those who applied chemical treatments had it easier, which I am sure would be refuted by those who eschew them. No two châteaux epitomise the differences better than Château Latour and Pontet Canet. Both Pauillac estates apply biodynamics. The First Growth suffered widespread mildew infection, which, together with disrupted flowering and deselection, reduced yields to 11 hl/ha. Pontet Canet frustratingly refused to give me a comparative figure when I visited. They insisted that they suffered negligible damage since they treated their vines 31 times. Pontet Canet’s winemaker, Mathieu Bessonnet, showed me a video of glowingly healthy bunches with nary a spot of rot in sight. Could that be true? This was corroborated by two other sources who told me that yields were around 40 hl/ha. Palmer, another biodynamic estate, recorded yields of 22 hl/ha.

Tasting with Mathieu Bessonnet and proprietor Alfred Tesseron at Pontet Canet, Justine Tesseron just out of frame.

What explains those differences?

Firstly, I would assert that Pontet Canet has practiced biodynamics for longer than almost anyone else, two decades to be exact. It’s not like you flick a switch and suddenly the vines are adapted to Steiner’s principles. It takes years to “bed in.” Even Lalou Bize-Leroy suffered huge crop losses in the early nineties. Benefits are accreted over time, and this caught out some estates that had converted in recent years. Bessonnet spoke of the “balance” that he has found in the vines, with some parcels actually increasing in terms of vigour. Secondly, at Pontet Canet, they were treating the vines more frequently with lower doses, likewise at d’Angludet, with a specially designed manual sprayer. For biodynamics to work in challenging vintages, commitment must verge on the obsessive. The fact is that one missed opportunity can have exponentially deleterious effects. There were no margins for error, and as Thomas Duroux at Palmer remarked, you had to be in your vineyard constantly, and every member of your vineyard team had to keep their spirits up, a factor often overlooked. Mildew doesn’t take weekends off. Thirdly, infection is not predictable or linear. It is a non-linear, complex system with an infinite number of variables. Many estates learned their lesson from the 2018 vintage in that the only strategy is to keep ahead of the spread. Excessive treatment is better than not enough or whatever is gauged as optimal in order not to exceed the legal maximum use of copper (4 kilograms per annum over seven years). The downside is that the more you enter the vineyard to treat the vines, the more you risk soil compaction, especially on clay soils.

The knock-on effect of the rainfall on the vines differs between estates. Some insist that their free-draining soils meant water simply washed away, so the months of rainfall were inconsequential. Personally, I do not subscribe to this view, partly through logic, partly by tasting the resulting wines. I agree with Matthieu Bordes at Lagrange and several other winemakers who surmise that accumulated water reserves meant that the roots were not encouraged to signal to the apex of the vine that it should quit growing foliage and switch to “survival mode,” thus diverting energy into the fruit that would make it ripen and attracting birds who then fly off and poop to create new vines elsewhere—the basic rule of Nature. Guillaume Pouthier of Les Carmes Haut-Brion insists that you must not conflate water deficiency and stress. Ideally, you want to drip-feed H2O to a vine’s roots, keeping them at a liminal point just before they shut their stoma and prevent sugar accumulation (vine stress).

Flowers In the Rain

June saw hardly any relief from the downpours, with 93 mm falling mainly in the second and third weeks of the month. This severely disrupted flowering, which was a week later than in 2023 though a day earlier than in 2016. It led to widespread millerandage and especially coulure that adversely affects Merlot. The difference in 2024 is that coulure also affected Cabernet Sauvignon, something that was not realized until harvest. So, at this early stage of the season, many were anticipating a reduced crop, although it was unequivocally no black-and-white picture. Jean-Charles Cazes told me that flowering at Lynch-Bages was quick, between seven and ten days. Or consider Pessac-Léognan… Estates located in the city of Bordeaux, such as Haut-Brion, suffered extensive coulure, yet those located outside, such as Smith Haut-Lafitte, enjoyed smooth flowering thanks to clement weather in the first week of June. Also, coulure has one silver lining in that it increases the spaces between berries, improving air circulation and mitigating against the spread of rot. At Montrose, the team removed foliage to enhance circulation. The takeaway from all this is that lower yields are generally not because of mildew, but coulure.

Mathieu Bordes, winemaker at Lagrange in Saint-Julien, managed to pick 18 hectares per day at one of the largest estates on the Left Bank.

Summer

Many winemakers spoke about the two-month summer of July and August that saved the vintage, a warm and dry spell that turned frowns upside down. Let’s drill down and examine the details. What was conveniently omitted from almost every oral summary of the vintage and technical booklet was that the first half of July was gloomy and overcast. You know those oppressive days when clouds sit suffocatingly low? Yes, winemakers were relieved that the rain had stopped, but meteorological data shows that sunlight hours were down compared to average figures, corroborated by more candid winemakers. Sunlight is that thing that comes in handy for photosynthesis and transpiration, especially during a shortened summer when every day counts.

“The lack of light means transpiration is very different,” Guillaume Pouthier explained. “You have less alcohol and higher acid, and you need to work on the structure to create creamier tannins.” There are measures to counteract the lack of vine stress, not least encouraging cover crops between rows, which estates like Les Carmes Haut-Brion, Montrose and many others did. This practice is also a means of restoring nitrogen in the soils.

This unseasonably overcast spell retarded sugar accretion, a factor that cannot be overlooked if you want a true picture of the season. It was only in the last ten days of July that dry and warm weather graced Bordeaux with its presence, leading to a short heatwave on July 28 that encouraged berries to change colour.

For certain, véraison was delayed. Mi-véraison was August 16, compared to July 23 in 2023 and a 2000-2020 average of August 6. Crucially, abundant subterranean water reserves meant that véraison was spun out over a longer period, exaggerating not only inter-parcel heterogeneity, but heterogeneity from one bunch to another, even within individual bunches that could be speckled green and purple. Edouard Moueix remarked that some berries were seven to ten days different in terms of their growth cycle. Had the remainder of the growing season been hot and dry, ripeness levels would have evened out. That never transpired. Instead, estates such as Phélan Ségur undertook green harvesting, which seems bizarre in a vintage where yields had already been depleted. But many of the top châteaux sent teams through the vines, at the most extreme, lopping off bunches that showed irregular ripening. The upside is that this unevenness improved air circulation, impeding the continued risk of brown rot infection because some parcels had not completely dried out.

Unsurprisingly, ripeness levels were delayed by about ten days compared to the average, with sugar levels below those of the previous year. But at least it was dry, with 46 mm of rain in August compared to an average of 57 mm. Some estates, particularly those on free-draining gravel soils, such as Mouton-Rothschild, reported vine stress. That seems perverse in a vintage synonymous with high rainfall. Emmanuel Danjoy at Mouton-Rothschild suggested that this stress reduced the amount of phenolics in the wines. Importantly, there were 260 more hours of sunshine than the average, with average temperatures of 28.4°C. Without August, 2024 would be giving 2013 a run for its money as the worst vintage in recent years.

I took this picture on the Left Bank before picking commenced in mid-September. It is patently clear that sorting would be necessary.

September

Had September been warm, dry and sunny, then 2024 could have been a great vintage, just shifted forward by a month. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. The first ten days of September saw 58 mm of rain, three times the normal average. After a few days of respite, showers returned on September 21, together with some localised hail that affected the Haut-Médoc and the Right Bank, devastating La Grave to the extent that J-P Moueix did not produce a wine.

The rainfall figures across Bordeaux vary, but it totaled between 100 mm and 140 mm. Though winemakers were keen to say that this rainfall had little effect in terms of not diluting the grapes, well, that depends on your terroir, vine age, root system, grape variety, etc. This would have greater consequences on the earlier-ripening Merlot rather than Cabernet Sauvignon, confirmed by a couple of the Bordeaux laboratories where I conducted my tastings. One winemaker informed me that after two days of heavy rain in Pomerol, they saw some grapes bursting. Bleeding juice encourages rot.

In addition, September’s cool temperatures meant that sugar levels remained lower than desirable, whilst malic acid decreased more slowly. Although pyrazine molecules did accumulate, suffice to say they remained below detection threshold levels. This was borne out in my own tastings of barrel samples. One upside of these cooler temperatures is that they inhibited the spread of rot that would have imperilled the harvest, whilst some estates like Lagrange practiced leaf-removal to enhance direct sunlight.

The Harvest

It was patently obvious that it was going to be a late harvest. The first white Sauvignon Blanc bunches were picked from August 20 (ten days later than in 2023) until September 12, with Sémillon picked from August 28 to September 19. With regard to the reds, some teams went out and picked early-ripening parcels of Merlot on September 18, but generally, harvest began on September 23. Was the optimal? Well, again, that depends on who you speak to, although Eric Kohler, who managed to make one of the most impressive wines on the Left Bank at Lafite-Rothschild, admitted that they probably picked one week before perfect maturation.

I joined a team of harvesters under the direction of Nicolas Audebert at Château Berliquet. It was cool and overcast, but the vendangeurs will still merry.

Peruse my producer profiles attached to tasting notes for major estates, and you will quickly see that harvest dates are almost identical, give or take a day. The inclement weather gave châteaux little wiggle room. This was not a vintage where estates enjoyed a “leisurely picking,” where they could undertake multiple sorties into vineyards when they deemed fruit optimally ripe on a sub-plot basis. That said, estates like Giscours managed to complete three passes through the vines, and Pontet Canet picked a little later, having accepted that there would be botrytis to sort at reception. But generally, in 2024, once the starting gun was fired, the instructions were to expedite picking, ergo, those with larger teams and/or smaller areas had an advantage. Some, like Phélan Ségur, contracted picking teams, whilst Ducru-Beaucaillou doubled the number of hands to 100.

There were two interrelated reasons for expediting the harvest: the weather forecast and the continuing threat of botrytis. The dilemma was whether to pick early to minimise the impact of rot but risk under-ripe fruit, or alternatively, to hold back, cross your fingers, and wait for the fruit to reach phenolic ripeness and accept that rot would spread, banking on the various means at your disposal to eliminate fruit at winery receptions. This was the strategy at Pontet Canet, where Matthieu Bessonnet explained that they focused on picking the heart of the vineyard and accepted that they would have to sacrifice less propitious parcels on the fringes.

Let’s look at two metrics of the 2024 growing season: yields and grape varieties.

Before setting out for Bordeaux, the general discourse was that 2024 was a small harvest, and generally that is true. If you have read the minutiae of the growing season in my report, that would be your logical conclusion. Some poor estates in Entre-Deux-Mers produced nothing at all, whilst even Grand Cru Classés suffered yields well below normal. That might not make accountants happy, but in some ways it salvaged the vintage because it meant the paucity of photosynthetic energy was dispersed over fewer bunches, allowing estates to achieve phenolic ripeness and avoid pyrazines. “If we had the quantity of 2022 or 2023, then it would have been a disaster,” remarked Olivier Berrouet at Petrus.

It is a complicated picture, and it would be wrong to assume that every estate struggled to fill their vats, many reporting a decent crop around 40 hl/ha. These are producers that suffered less mildew pressure, and less coulure and millerandage at flowering. Readers will find specific figures in the Producer Profiles attached to the accompanying tasting notes.

The topsy-turvy growing season reconfigured the composition of wines in terms of grape varieties. On the Left Bank, percentages of Merlot were reduced due to being adversely impacted by coulure and millerandage. This was only marginally offset by berry size. Matthieu Bordes at Lagrange reported that the average berry weight for Merlot was 1.7 grams, compared to the usual 1.5, probably due to uptake of water in September. However, Cabernet Sauvignon berries were only slightly smaller than average. Bordes had no explanation for this phenomenon. In addition, quite a few estates incorporated a little more Petit Verdot. Claire Villars-Lurton explained that the variety is more resistant to mildew than Cabernet Sauvignon, though others, like Christian Seely at Pichon-Baron, stated that there was no Petit Verdot because the variety could not achieve sufficient ripeness. Julien Viaud, consultant at Rolland Labs, said that the novel set of circumstances in 2024 meant that the blends were a little trickier.

In The Winery

With producers aware that the 2024 vintage had bestowed less concentrated juice with more acidity, the crucial decision was whether to keep within the limitations of the vintage or try to compensate for that shortfall in the winery. Most winemakers were adamant that sorting was fundamental to quality. In 2024, the one tool that many praised was “bain densiometric,” which efficiently eradicates underripe fruit by running it through water with a dissolved sugar solution (except at Beauséjour Duffau Lagarrosse—see Producer Profile). The riper, ergo heavier fruit sinks, and the less ripe fruit floats and is discarded. Since some bunches showed variegated ripeness levels between berries, such technology was an efficient means of eliminating underripe fruit, which explains why I found little amongst top-rank châteaux. Plus, of course, there is optical sorting, de-stemming and good old manual sorting. Many properties increased the number of “eyes” at the sorting line in anticipation of heterogeneity.

Sorting at Château Lascombes in Margaux in late September.

There seemed to be a real divide between whether to do a pre-ferment cold maceration in order to enhance flavours—some did, other did not. Received wisdom was to conduct a less intense maceration: gentle, though often longer, in order to build the mid-palate, notwithstanding that lower alcohol levels mean that the efficiency of extraction is reduced. You needed longer to obtain colour and tannins, though some, like Phélan Ségur, feared extracting too much tannin and enacted a shorter maceration period.

Punching down was eschewed for pumping over, albeit with reduced volumes. For example, Nicolas Glumineau at Pichon-Lalande elected to pump one-third of the normal volume of juice, while others just left the must under the cap for so-called “infusion.” There is a minor backlash. A couple of reputed winemakers opined that the hands-off approach has gone too far and denudes wines of sufficient density. Another means of reconstituting your 2024 red was to blend in more pressed wine. This was particularly noticeable on the Left Bank, with some properties such as Pichon-Lalande adding 16%, safe in the knowledge that more rigorous sorting results in higher grade vin de presse. Go back a couple of decades and I bet châteaux would not be so confident.

I appreciate that châteaux were more open about adjustments to their 2024s: chaptalisation, saignée and the technology many are loathe to admit, reverse osmosis (R.O.), especially for the “undernourished” Merlot and Cabernet Franc on the Left Bank. Léoville Poyferré, for example, conducted some R.O. on those two varieties, likewise Château Lagrange and others.

Oak regimes were interesting in 2024. The question was whether you accepted that the wines had less substance and therefore required proportionally less new oak, or you upheld the level because you had confidence in your wine. Lowering the percentage is an admission that somehow your wine is inferior to other vintages or other estates, which sounds nonsensical to my ears. A majority of estates did in fact dial down the level of new oak, either in terms of ordering less from cooperages or employing larger vessels like foudres or amphorae. This was a vintage where those alternatives became valuable. The duration of élevage remains to be seen, though some plan a shorter duration, as the wines have less substance.

Sauternes

A rainy season in Bordeaux spells trouble for red varieties, however, that can be advantageous for the wines of Sauternes. The growing season did not begin auspiciously. I remember staying in Sauternes during UGC week in April 2024, waking up to see wax burners among the vines warding off frost after early budding. Flowering passed smoothly relative to the rest of Bordeaux, whilst the absence of heatwaves meant that the fruit could maintain higher levels of malic and tartaric acidity.

Indeed, by the end of August, unlike in dry vintages such as 2020 and 2022, 100 mm of rain over a fortnight led to the rapid spread of pourriture noble. What estates then needed was dry weather to concentrate the fruit. This arrived on September 12, encouraging nearly all to make a first trie before September 25. Forecasters began predicting unfavourable weather, but it was drier than expected, and many were able to make a second pass through the vineyard in early October that tended to yield more concentrated fruit. Thereafter, cooler conditions predicated sour rot, and any fruit picked towards the end of the month had to be rigorously sorted or not used in the final blend.

How the Wines Were Tasted

I tasted all wines in this report between April 1 and 17, the customary mixture of comprehensive tastings courtesy of organisational bodies and consultants, plus château visits. I undertook more tête-à-têtes to gain insights and issue challenges whenever necessary, since this is a vintage where difficult questions had to be asked and statistics meticulously analysed. I prefer debate rather than simply accepting everything I am being told. My job is to divine between relevant factual information and what winemakers want me to hear. With this in mind, before boarding my flight to France, I examined independent weather reports. For example, practically everyone remembered to forget that July was not blisteringly sunny, but for the most part was gloomy and overcast. This is a vintage where there was no single successful approach, and on many occasions, winemakers contradicted each other. They could both be correct. Truth is always in the wine.

Hard at work with more samples. This was one of the first tastings at the beginning of my trip.

Another point I must stress is that samples were variable, so it was vital to keep retasting. That was partly because of swings in weather conditions and partly because those pouring must pay closer attention. Wrenched unfinished from barrel with an estimated dose of sulphur, samples were less robust than recent riper vintages and demanded sensitive handling. Bottles were more fragile and mercurial once exposed to oxygen, which is why I skipped any bottles below shoulder level. On three visits, I requested another sample because I intuitively felt the initial sample was not correct (and so it proved).

The harder the season, the more emotion is wrapped up in it. That was obvious from my numerous tastings. I would be no different. Emeline Borie put it succinctly when she said that the emotional trauma of 2024 differs from reality. I do not doubt that is true, although a professional critic must ignore that emotion to retain objectivity. As such, this vintage is as much a litmus test for critics, because sometimes honesty is going to sting.

The Wines

To quote Philippe Bascaules at Château Margaux: “Though 2024 is not a great vintage, it is within the context of the growing season.” That’s a perspicacious assessment. On numerous occasions, when asked my opinion, my default response was that 2024 is a good vintage with limitations. Some have likened 2024 to vintages in the eighties, before global warming, but the best vintages in that decade were generally more benevolent to winemakers. Two thousand twenty-four is also an extremely inconsistent vintage where, unfortunately, quality drops away beyond the major names. I hate the fact that 2024 is yet again a maleficent season that widens the divide between the haves and have-nots.

This is a year where quality resides with those in possession of the best terroir, those with the deepest pockets and those who made the right decisions at the right times.

I sincerely wish that quality was evenly distributed to give some respite to beleaguered winemakers on the fringes of Bordeaux who have no idea whether they can survive.

Whether winemakers admit it or not, and many privately do, this is a growing season that is impossible to transcend. Mother Nature put a cap on the maximum quality achievable. The fact that many estates reached this notional “peak” should be applauded—it would have been impossible just a couple of decades ago, when a similar growing season would have foisted a modern-day 1984, 1992 or 2013. The 2024 vintage is unequivocally far superior to any of those, thanks to technology, know-how and more quality-driven producers. A handful of 2024s do touch the sky: Vieux-Château-Certan, Lafleur, l’Église-Clinet, Lafite-Rothschild, Margaux and Montrose spring to mind.

In addition, 2024 follows the pattern of poor red vintages being much better for the dry whites. This might be my priority in terms of purchasing decisions. La Mission Haut-Brion, Domaine de Chevalier, Malartic-Lagravière and many others savoured a season where the cool conditions could lock in acidity and yield riveting, tensile Sauvignon Blanc/Sémillon-based wines that often trump their red counterparts. Traditional red appellations are also producing some excellent whites. The Le Blanc de Lafite is deeply impressive, whilst Les Champs Libres on the Right Bank, from the Guinaudeaus at Lafleur, might be the best vintage to date.

The Sauternes are very good, but not the classic vintage that was in the cards until the weather turned the wrong way in October, denying producers later tries that would have enhanced complexity. Yet these wines are full of freshness and purity, with marvellous contributions from Doisy-Daëne, Coutet, Guiraud and Suduiraut. However, some estates were overwhelmed by the growing season, and at the time of this writing, it is not known whether there will be a Climens of de Fargues in 2024. Moreover, the dry Sauternes category appears to be finding its place, and there is a steady improvement over the last decade. I am finding that dry Sauternes partner brilliantly with lightly spiced Asian cuisine.

Joséphine Duffau Lagarrosse at Beauséjour Duffau Lagarrosse in Saint-Émilion, whose vines benefited from their limestone soils and a spanking new winery.

Returning to the reds, the attribute that defines the best is a banal but powerful one…

The best ‘24s are pretty.

It’s an adjective I used a number of times. Some might call it damning with faint praise, but I use it in the sincerest sense. Tell me, what is wrong with a pretty wine? The aromatics are rarely powerful yet frequently delineated and focused, new oak dialed down a notch so that the cooperage doesn’t speak over the fruit. They are balanced. The spine of acidity lends poise. They are imbued with ample freshness and sapidity, often in the form of black olive tapenade, that encourages you back for another sip. As such, I envisage these will make ideal restaurant wines that will provide easy-drinking pleasure whilst you wait for the 2019 or 2022s to mature. The 2024s fit in with the “DBY” mantra: drink Bordeaux young (even if I have strong reservations against that as outlined in my recent piece on mature claret.

The top tier of quality wines in 2024 was made possible by the following reasons:

1. The best terroirs managed to stress vines sufficiently to imbue complexity.

2. The slow accretion of sugar and long hangtimes lead to fine tannins.

3. Lower yields due to mildew, coulure, millerandage and green harvesting made phenolic ripeness attainable.

4. Estates held their nerve, accepting botrytis infection to achieve physiological ripeness and being able to eradicate subpar berries at winery reception.

5. To quote Noëmie Durantou’s metaphor: “It was a year when the opponents are more difficult, but the players are more trained”. There’s greater know-how and experience now.

Yet the limitations upon quality cannot be ignored:

1. The availability of water made it difficult for vines to suffer water deficiency.

2. Lack of sunlight hours in the first half of July.

3. Inclement weather in September that retarded sugar accumulation and restricted the window of harvesting.

4. Rot that not every producer could completely eradicate before entering the winery.

Even amongst the elite, the vintage tripped up some marquee names, not through any fault of their own, but because the margins of error were small and random, notwithstanding the ease of calling out mistakes in hindsight. There is a perverse beauty in fallibility that renders 2024 a fascinating vintage to analyse and drink. Edouard Moueix describes the vintage as “convenable.” The closest translation to that is “acceptable.” That’s probably not going to ignite demand.

Personally, I do not have a problem with the wines being light. However, many of them, even at the top level, clearly lack real complexity. At their worst, they are just a bit… boring. A good proportion of wines possess little structure and grip on the finish, like a party-goer slipping away without saying “au revoir.” In terms of drinkability and approachability, that can be perceived as a virtue, especially coupled with the lower alcohol levels we have been clamouring for. Some wines are lumbered with excessive oak. This was not a vintage where you could use high percentages, except for a handful of top terroirs. There are some potentially good wines, especially on the Right Bank, that tried to compensate for the lack of density with oak. This led to some very dry and quite astringent finishes. Overall, 2024 is not one to place upon the mantelpiece of great vintages. They will not be hailed as masterpieces like the best of 2016, 2019, 2020 and 2022, perhaps even some from 2023.

This must be reflected in my scores, which some winemakers will be peeved about. They should not be.

Given the obstacles placed along the growing season, any 2024 that scores above 90 points is a success.

Regrettably, too many merchants and winemakers do not look beyond numbers, akin to me assessing a wine based on its label. Nothing I can do about that. Paradoxically, my scores do not reflect my sentiment towards a vintage inasmuch as there are off vintages that I adore and lauded vintages that foment indifference. Twenty-four fits into the former category because of the efforts made by the top estates when their backs were against the wall, but by the same token, no amount of inveigling or euphemism alters the fact that the wines do not reach the ethereal heights that Bordeaux has achieved several times in recent years. In my experience, this is only admitted once there is a new vintage to sell.

Final Thoughts

I called this article “Event Horizon.” That does not imply the 2024 vintage is as traumatic as watching the classic 1997 sci-fi movie, even if some winemakers probably felt it was. No, it is partly because 2024 is chock-full of climatic events and is, quality aside, fascinating to examine. Secondly, in astronomical terms, 2024 marks the point of no return. A black hole is not about to swallow Bordeaux, but this vintage is a perfect metaphor for a region staring into an unknown future. Nobody is pretending that consumers will flock to buy 2024s—there remains a gap between consumers’ expectations on price and châteaux’s willingness to discount to that point. There is no saviour riding over the horizon, no emerging country of insatiable Bordeaux-lovers, all against a backdrop of a vine-pull scheme, apathy towards wine as a beverage, and the fact that Bordeaux is wrestling with an image crisis. Merchants blame châteaux. Châteaux blame merchants. Many winemakers adopt a “the show must go on” attitude, but things have to change. And they will.

Here’s the rub…

Twenty-four is the ideal vintage for a reset. Put the “minion” who featured in my opening satire, my cipher for the Bordeaux consumer, first and foremost. Appease their requirements above all—what they are willing to pay for what remains one of the greatest wines in the world. In the beginning of my career, off-vintages in the mould of 2024 would be discounted, and guess what? Nobody lost face, including the grandest châteaux, and crucially, it kept the primeur system flowing, bottles passing through the distribution chain to the all-important final consumer. Whether they take that chance is up to them.

© 2025, Vinous. No portion of this article may be copied, shared or redistributed without prior consent from Vinous. Doing so is not only a violation of our copyright but also threatens the survival of independent wine criticism.

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