The Dalmatian Vintage: Bordeaux 2023

BY NEAL MARTIN | APRIL 29, 2024

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

The invitation had arrived in a wax-sealed envelope the previous week. The château manager is reluctant to attend, but how can you refuse a banquet at the Palais de Versailles with Ferran Adrià reviving El Bulli for one night only? The invite came from a neighboring château without mentioning the reason for the extravaganza. Surely an event of immense magnitude. Annoyingly, it had specified fancy dress. Theme? Court of King Louis XIV. That is why he is sweating in the back seat of a Merc dressed in a monstrous curly black wig, powdered face with a pencil mustache, silk brevet, flouncy lace cravat last seen on Prince’s Purple Rain tour and itchy white stockings stolen from his wife’s top drawer. Next to him, Sandrine, from accounts, is dressed as Marie-Antoinette, suffocating in a boned bodice and wearing the expression of someone about to be guillotined. Naturally, their attire attracts the attention of protesting farmers manning roadblocks down the motorway who either holler expletives or laugh.

When they arrive, the party is in full swing. Mark Ronson is under the chandeliers spinning tunes. Waiters weave their way through the throng with platters of Beluga caviar while sommeliers saber magnums of vintage champagne. He spots a fellow château manager and asks: “Any idea why we’re here and why I’m dressed like a poodle about to be spaded?”

“Not a clue,” he replies, his mascara beginning to run. “Now we are going to have to organize something even more decadent.”

“I should be in the office preparing for primeur. Négociants and merchants ring me every minute pleading for reasonable release prices.”

“Ridiculous!” he scoffs. “Apart from multiple arenas of conflict, political instability, a raft of imminent national elections, dire economic data, stubbornly high inflation, the aftermath of Brexit, restaurants struggling for survival, a moribund fine wine market, widespread lack of disposable income, an influential anti-alcohol lobby, a younger generation’s apathy, warehouses full of unsold pallets, withering demand in the Far East, global warming, extreme weather events, labor shortages, back vintages being off-loaded cheaper than primeur, burgeoning great wines from other regions and an unshakable sense of Bordeaux being outmoded, what is there for Bordeaux to worry about?”

“Exactly.”

Their conversation is interrupted by fanfare, and a rather portly gentleman looking bizarrely like Adam Ant taps the microphone to get attention. Finally, guests will discover why they’re here. Speculation is rife: a century-spanning vertical, sold to place on a luxury conglomerate’s mantelpiece, or, God forbid, a perfect score from Neal Martin.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announces. “For several years, we have undertaken a secret project to design… [cue unnecessary pause to build non-existent tension] …our brand-new capsule!”

The deflation around the ballroom is palpable. For several proprietors, it reminds them of the reaction when they released their 2022 last year.

“After submissions from the world’s greatest designers, we unveil what has been baptized as ‘Capsule Magnifico’!”

The lights dim. A platform is lowered from the ceiling, carrying what appears to be a Jeroboam hidden under a silk cloth. The proprietor ceremoniously whips it away just as an opera singer belts out Ave Maria, and silver confetti falls from above. Silence ensues. A lone voice from the back pipes up…

“It looks exactly the same as the old one.”

“Exactly! Marketing genius!” the beaming proprietor exclaims. “And to mark this auspicious new era, let us gather at the windows for a bonfire display.”

Disgruntled guests shuffle towards the window, and the velvet curtains are drawn back to reveal Nôtre’s famous palace gardens, which are illuminated by fires all several meters high. Peering closely, the château manager realizes they are built from pulled-up vines. Winemakers from Bordeaux’s poorest appellations are hurling them into the flames. Before he can avert his gaze, one of them catches his eye. He walks up to the window, cradling a vine still caked with soil, so all that separates their faces is the windowpane. His voice is audible above the crackling flames…

“Mon grand-père a planté cette vigne.” (My grandfather planted this vineyard.)

He turns and stoically throws the vine into the pyre, and sparks light up the night sky. In a moment of clarity, the château manager comprehends the predicament facing Bordeaux, the precipice upon which it stands. His phone beeps. A text informing him that shareholders have vetoed any price reduction that might damage brand perception. Sotto voce, he mutters to himself…

“If consumers cannot afford their wine, let them eat cake.”

Sunset over Bordeaux, April 14. I took this photo as we were coming into land for this year’s primeur tastings, the confluence of the Garonne River on the left and the Dordogne on the right into the Gironde Estuary.

The Growing Season

The 2023 vintage swerved from one episode to another as if Mother Nature was making it up as she went along. There was rain, mildew pressure, cool inclement spells and a sudden heatwave that dovetailed into a second summer. There was no thematic arc. Mother Nature kept winemakers guessing until September. It was a year when producers had to make critical decisions where one wrong call could be punished severely. Véronique Sanders analogized it to steeplechase, and that’s a race that continues right until the cork is in the bottle next summer.

The year kicked off in January with wintry spells that extended into the next month. Early bud break was due to a combination of high sunlight hours in February (168 hours compared to a 1981-2010 average of 115) and a particularly warm March that reached over 16°C, a hallmark of several recent vintages. Vines switched on their ignitions early to winemakers’ consternation and were left on tenterhooks until mid-May, fearing a spring frost. That did not transpire in 2023. According to Cos d’Estournel winemaker Dominique Arangoïts, there was also high fertility within nascent buds due to the previous year’s weather, obliging strict de-budding to limit vine load to six to eight bunches. Temperatures thereafter hovered above average throughout the growing season, seemingly without the heat waves that marked 2022, at least for now. May was dark and 1°C above average at 17.1°C, while June was 2.4°C above at 21.7°C.

So, the burning question is whether Bordeaux saw a repeat of the lengthy drought of 2022.

Answer: no.

June is earning a reputation as a ‘wet’ month. It saw an average of 83mm of rain: a series of thunderstorms barrelled their way across the region and created perfect conditions for one of the year’s headlines - mildew.

As seen from my growing season summary, mildew pressure was prolonged and intense, especially for the genetically more susceptible Merlots, thereby differentiating between Left and Right Bank. There were also important variations in rainfall between appellations. Saint-Émilion saw 239mm from May to the end of September, while Saint-Estèphe had 153mm. Generally, the rain increases as you travel south through the Médoc, west to east. Two thousand twenty-three marks the third vintage in the last six years, where chef de cultures were confronted with rot and pressure was early and likewise disproportionately affected Merlot. Gavin Quinney, owner of Château Bauduc, commented that it was the worst mildew pressure he had witnessed in 25 years, and it decimated the beleaguered Entre-Deux-Mers where I heard of 200 hectares of vineyards that did not produce a single bottle due to mildew. Imagine the psychological impact, let alone financial. These storms meant that June saw eight days of meteorologically termed ‘significant rainfall’. The problem was that the leaves seemed to be constantly covered with a film of moisture that made spraying difficult. Combined with the warm temperatures, mildew was like a dagger being held to vines’ throats. Of course, that does not imply the dagger drew blood.

Nevertheless, the media caught wind of the ominous threat. Sud-Ouest newspaper’s headline on July 13 exclaimed, “Mildew – Catastrophe in the Vineyards,” while, as Quinney reported, even the mainstream newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, reported that 90% of vineyards had been affected. Not for the first time, this is a misleading headline since this figure includes places where perhaps just a few treatable vines suffered. If you can keep it at bay, then mildew has no detrimental effect on quality. That said, I believe the situation on the ground was more serious than some insouciant winemakers portray. Occasionally, I took claims that mildew completely passed them by with a pinch of salt. When one winemaker openly admits that 50% of their vines were impacted while their neighbor nonchalantly brushes away the idea there was a single spore, which is 100% true?

Undeniably, there was variation. The intensity of mildew pressure varied according to dryness per micro-climate, amount of rainfall/humidity and soil type (compacted soil leaves surface water and increases humidity). Mildew pressure varied according to the dryness of each micro-climate, amount of rainfall/humidity and soil type (compacted soils potentially leading to more surface water and increased humidity), type of rootstock and vine age. In addition, cover crops can reduce humidity as well as make it easier to drive tractors through a slippery ground surface in the vineyard. The worst affected plots suffered mildew, not only on the leaves but on bunches. Nicolas Audebert at Rauzan-Ségla was astonished at how rapidly mildew leaped from leaves to bunches, which is more damaging and problematic. As Nicolas Glumineau at Pichon Comtesse explained, once you see mildew, it’s too late because it means it has been there for 20 or 30 days and will “run” through the vineyard beyond your control. This is why pre-emptive spraying is fundamental to successfully protecting vines. Glumineau is one of several winemakers that told me that they learned a hard lesson in 2021 - that it is much better to go in hard and early in terms of copper up to what is legally allowed and ease down once you’ve got on top of it rather than striving to use the minimum.

New egg-shaped vats were recently installed at Pontet Canet, one of Bordeaux’s most innovative estates. Concrete vats are buried in the ground - you can just see the tops sticking out from the floor.

Arguably, the most important factor is the lengths that vineyard managers and their teams were prepared or able to go in terms of pre-emptively spraying. Mildew doesn’t work Monday to Friday. Are you prepared to give up your Sunday to tackle the vines? Can you finance the higher labor costs in doing so? Are you like Château Lagrange, who had 11 tractors simultaneously treating vines so that even one of the largest Médoc estates could protect the entire vineyard in one day? Going to strap that spray on your back and slog your way through the vines? Are you like Noëmie Durantou at l’Église-Clinet, who spent Friday night frantically telephoning friends to hire quad bikes because it was too wet to use tractors? She did, and my review indicates that it was worth it.

Against this backdrop, flowering was typical for the time of year, though later than in 2022 and 2020, mi-floraison on June 3. As luck would have it, flowering slotted into a brief window of clement weather that preceded June’s storms, and so it was extremely uniform, predicating an abundant crop. July and August saw warm temperatures close to previous growing seasons at 21.1°C and 21.8°C, respectively. This helped to halt the spread of mildew, though, by this time, some berries were “gonflanté,” bloated after absorbing June’s rain. July also saw teams in the vineyard green harvesting to reduce yields and enhance concentration, many conducting two passes through the vines. Again, whether you can do this depends on whether you can afford to. Some de-leafed, although consultant Thomas Duclos said that, in his opinion, this was unwise, as it could unbalance the vine.

Compared to 2022’s temperatures of 23.4°C and 24.1°C in July and August, as previously mentioned, vines did not have to cope with torrid heat. However, it came after a period of inclement weather. So, unlike in 2022, when vines could acclimatize, in 2023, two heat waves from August 18 to 24 and September 3 to 10 (the dates vary slightly between winemakers!) came as a jolt, especially for younger vines as temperatures soared to 38°C. Consequently, despite average lower temperatures, vines could still shut down, and I feel that it was more prevalent than some winemakers admit. July was dry with 22mm of rain, which is above last year’s paltry figure of 3mm, but importantly, it was unseasonably cloudy with fewer sunlight hours (230) than average. August’s rainfall was just below the mean. Many winemakers felt they had the right amount of water at the right time. However, several admitted that at this stage, analyzing their fruit, they were not convinced that a high-quality vintage was on the cards because of that inclement July. Guillaume Pouthier at Les Carmes Haut-Brion claimed that up to 15% of échaudage (shriveled/burnt) berries needed to be sorted out. However, other winemakers in Pessac-Léognan said that figure was much lower, 1% to 2%.

Henri Lurton commented how the second summer altered his perception of the vintage. Average temperatures in September were a balmy 21.3°C, way above the ten-year average of 18.5°C. At La Conseillante, there were 12 days above 30°C. This meant that bunches could reach phenolic maturity but, and this is an important point, without the same sugar levels as 2022 due to lower average temperatures throughout the growth cycle. Hello, lower alcohol levels! Come harvest time Bordeaux basically had the same amount of rainfall over the previous 11 months (799mm) as the ten-year average.

Down in Sauternes, the humid environment that seemed to dog the Left and Right Bank actually fomented perfect conditions for the creation of noble rot. Many went out in early September to pick shriveled, non-botrytized berries and passerillage in order to have lots that would impart acidity. Then, botrytis infection rushed across the appellation following 75mm of rain on September 11. So, instead of several small tries, most estates conducted just a couple of large tries, which formed entire blends during 20 days of warm, dry weather from September 23 that broke on October 18, by which time practically everything was picked. There was just a bit of grapeworm that affected some of the Sauvignon Blanc in Sauternes and Bommes, but it was only a minor problem that could be easily dealt with.

Visiting châteaux at the end of the 2023 harvest. These are some of the last pickings at Lascombes where Axel Heinz is guiding the Margaux estate in a new direction.

The Harvest

The whites were harvested from mid-August, which is becoming the norm. The Sauvignon Blanc was picked from August 12, three days later than in 2022, and the Sémillon a couple of days later, and this lasted until around the second week of September, depending on the property. Winemakers were optimistic since the fruit generally contained lower alcohol levels than the previous year but with lower pH levels. The reds kicked off with the early ripening Merlot around the first week of September, though the harvest clicked up a few gears in the week commencing September 11. The Cabernet Sauvignon was hot on its heels and began to be picked a week later, whereas, in bygone years, there would have been an “intermission” between the two varieties. This does not apply to all estates. For example, winemaker Frédéric Faye could spend a bit more time with his electric guitar as Figeac enjoyed a 12-day break between the Merlot and Cabernets. It was full speed ahead in mid-September until French weather forecasters threw a spanner in the works and predicted rainy weather on September 20. This persuaded some to expedite picking. However, not for the first time, their forecast proved inaccurate. The 100mm of rain never materialized, more like 20mm, actually beneficial, enough to push the Cabernets to full maturity. Dry and sunny conditions allowed picking to continue and allowed teams to pick à la Sauternes, conducting sorties in and out of the vines – precision picking. Of course, that’s as long as you had the manpower to do that. In the end, many estates told me that they undertook the longer harvesting period ever, sometimes extending over a month.

It is not a gargantuan crop as doubtlessly it would have been in days before green harvesting. Readers will find specific data in terms of hectoliters per hectare for individual estates within tasting notes. It’s a healthy crop rather than a bumper. Official figures for AC Bordeaux show that the harvest was 3.84 million liters, which is 13% above 2022, though, within the context of the last decade, it is the third ‘small’ vintage in a row. It depends on how you classify ‘small’. Don’t expect to see empty barrel cellars like I did in the Côte d’Or in the past, though it is still well below the 5.81 million average crop between 2001 and 2010.

It is essential to examine this data on an appellation level. Firstly, that reduction in 2023 is mainly at the lowest Bordeaux AC and Bordeaux Supérieur level for reasons I explain forthwith. For example, the yield for the latter was just 28.9hL/ha (except for the dry whites). Moving up the hierarchy to Grand Cru Classés feels like examining a completely different growing season. The Left Bank saw a bountiful crop: 51.6hL/ha in Saint-Estèphe, 62% compared to the previous vintage. Pauillac and Saint-Julien reach 47.1hL/ha and 50.3hL/ha, respectively, and remember that those are average figures. Therefore, statistically, many cropped much more. Margaux is less at 37.7hL/ha. On the Right Bank, Pomerol saw a 39% increase in production at 45.2hL/ha, while Saint-Émilion Grand Crus posted 40.5hL/ha, a reduction of 6%. Again, be careful with that figure because many Saint-Émilion estates unaffected by mildew saw large volumes of Merlot that would ultimately tip final blends towards that variety. Indeed, data indicates that the average weight of 100 Merlot berries was 153 grams in 2023 compared to 129 grams the previous year due to the June rains. One interesting aspect is that the levels of anaerobic bacteria in the berries are lower than average in the Médoc. This phenomenon was pointed out by winemaker Mee Godard when I was in Beaujolais recently, and it risks diminishing the microbiological activity during alcoholic fermentation, which can impact complexity.

Returning to yields, what do these figures mean? Firstly, some châteaux did over-crop their vines, resulting in diluted fruit. Again, this comes down to the individual estate and whether they green harvested not once but preferably twice to moderate yields. And again, do you have the money and the manpower to ensure that happens? There is a counterargument that high yields help mitigate against rapid sugar accumulation and excessively high alcohol, explaining why levels are lower compared to 2022.

I visited l’Église-Clinet in Pomerol at the very beginning and end of my tour to check if Noëmie Durantou had possibly made the best wine. Late father Denis is in the background if you look carefully.

Winemaking

This is a season where terroir, vineyard husbandry and viticultural decisions underpin the quality of wines, though that does not preclude important choices made in the winery. Generally, there was a continued reduction in fermentation temperatures and lengths of alcoholic fermentation and certainly shorter and gentler maceration as the color came within just a day. Many wineries are equipping or inaugurating bespoke cuveries that made precision vinifications possible in a year when that was necessary. Interestingly, it was a vintage when blending was much trickier than normal, and sometimes, it was as if the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot didn’t quite fit together as they usually do. Hence, winemakers will make some modifications in terms of assemblage. Most wines are currently aging in barrels with less new oak than a decade ago, and the reds will be bottled next year.

How The Wines Were Tasted

The 2023s mark my 27th primeur. My approach is always to include a mixture of as many château visits within the time allowed, where it is essential not just to taste samples but to hear winemakers’ insights and views, probing where necessary. No one ever has anything negative to say, so it demands a bit of coaxing, awkward questions and skepticism where appropriate. I spent just under three weeks in the region. Year by year, more estates insist upon face-to-face tastings, which means I spent more time driving than tasting. Suffice it to say that with an early campaign that would have just kicked off when you read this, I endeavored to publish as soon as possible on the proviso that it would be the same quality and detail had more time been allowed. There is no point in spending time in a region to collect numbers.

The Wines

For this primeur, more than any, it is imperative to separate quality from price. Primeur is a combination of both, but they are not inextricable, uncoupled when the Bordeaux elite sought to reinvent itself as an aspirational luxury and let prices float upwards, the fallout of which is unfolding. However, objectivity is predicated upon being immune and uninfluenced by extraneous factors. In other words, whatever exists outside that glass of that unfinished sample in front of you, the red carpets and glitzy tasting rooms, the tsunami of euphemism, the cabaret of primeur.

You want me to tell you how the wines are looking? No problem.

Want me to tell you whether I think they’ll be worth buying?

It's impossible to say before any prices are released, but I’ll give you my two cents once they are. Given that the first incipient releases will come out before the primeur bunting has been taken down, then readers can expect that imminently.

So, how is the Bordeaux 2023 vintage based on primeur, lest we forget that these are unfinished wines?

I titled this report “The Dalmatian Vintage” because spots of astounding quality are scattered from Bordeaux’s head to toe. Outside those spots, then there are all manner of shortcomings, including some of its more famous names. Nobody will deny that, unlike 2022, 2023 is a heterogeneous vintage. This precludes it from being a bona fide great vintage. It would sit uncomfortably on a mantelpiece alongside 2016, 2020 and 2022. Just as undeniable is that some châteaux pulled out magical wines from their top hat, surpassing those aforementioned years in one or two cases.

It is a season riddled with paradoxes, making it fascinating to examine and explicate. For example, statistically, it was a rainy growing season, but precipitation fell before and after the vines’ growth cycle. Wait a jiffy…June was wet…so was it dry or wet? Damp? It depends on how you look at it. Despite the thermostat dialing down, it was the second hottest year since the beginning of the 20th century after 2022. Yet time and again, winemakers expressed relief from being spared prolonged heat waves and drought. Vineyards enjoyed a second summer that shepherded fruit to full maturity, gifting pickers ideal conditions to conduct precise intra-plot picking. On the other hand, that is moot if you don’t have a bespoke winery equipped with smaller vats in order to vinify small lots individually. Furthermore, there are ongoing challenges in recruiting pickers, not for the top estates who can afford to pay more and provide accommodation but certainly for those lower down the hierarchy.

The watchword tattooed across 2023 is ‘classicism’. What does that mean? Wines that Socrates would have enjoyed? Perhaps a vintage not molded by tropical temperatures and Saharan rainfall to render wines with a Mediterranean slant. In 2023, it meant lower alcohol levels in the 13-something range, though a number on the Right Bank tip at 14.5%. Certainly, the 2023s do not possess the opulence and Rubenesque bodies of the previous vintage, although intermittently, they convey those traits, not least where the August/September heat wave pushed some Merlots too far. Generally, the 2023s are relatively more tannic than we’ve become accustomed to, more linear and vertical, though endowed with greater fruit concentration than the 2021s. That appeals to my predilection. The best wines embrace these traits while maintaining sufficient fruit and grip, occasionally harking back to the kind of barrel samples encountered in the early days of my career, and I mean that in a good sense.

Edouard Moueix presided over a superb Belair-Monange at their astonishing new winery that I visited for the first time.

One virtue that underlies the best wines is the brightness or what the French term “éclat”. It’s a kind of nascent energy that, in my experience, augurs a sample that will evolve into a great wine. This brightness derives from the fruit, acidity, fineness of tannins and the more intangible concept of their personality, a combination of all. Conversely, some samples came across as serious and dour babies with the weight of the world on their shoulders. The differences could be stark and highlighted at an informative, “end of tour” UGC tasting where I could re-taste often for a third or fourth time and juxtapose many major names. Indeed, some samples at this tasting were superior to those at châteaux.

The pinnacles of 2023 possess all these factors. I maintained my Lady Gaga-approved poker face tasting l’Église-Clinet, looking indifferent as my senses performed star-jumps of elation. I returned almost four weeks later at the end of my ‘marathon’ to check it was as brilliant as I thought. It wasn’t. It was even better. This Pomerol is joined by a cluster of fabulous wines on the Right Bank: Lafleur, La Conseillante, Cheval Blanc and Ausone and then on the Left Bank: Château Margaux, Mouton-Rothschild, Pichon Comtesse de Lalande and Montrose. Pessac-Léognan is patchier than other appellations, to be fair, but you find a stellar Haut-Bailly and Haut-Brion, which this year puts a gap between itself and La Mission Haut-Brion.

Unequivocally, it is a great vintage for dry whites. Vines benefitted from cooler summer temperatures and cooler nights that locked in acidity, plus the heat wave came after most were picked, even if some Sauvignon Blancs were affected. There are outstanding examples from Domaine de Chevalier, Smith Haut-Lafitte, La Louvière and a little gem from Pique Caillou.

Likewise, the raft of dry Sauternes is the finest I have encountered in its brief history, the best surfeit with tension and depth. Sauternes also benefitted from the humid conditions that allowed botrytis to explode after September showers. There is uniformity throughout the wines, and pleasingly, lesser-known names are coming out of nowhere and showing their mettle. That said, Sauternes couldn’t quite conjure a superstar, even if Suduiraut, Doisy-Daëne and Coutet come close. I was perplexed by Climens that just seemed bereft of what makes this Barsac so great. The château kindly sent another sample on the final day’s tastings, but juxtaposing it against its peers made it seem generic. That’s not Climens. That aside, Sauternes brims with golden greats in 2023, many due to be released immediately after UGC week. Pick your favorite, and maybe order some cheeky half-bottles?

There are caveats in 2023 that cannot be ignored. A major one is that frequently, the tannins come across as hard and render finishes austere with insufficient fruit to maintain balance. This is due, in part, to the inclement early part of the growing season, especially the crucial month of July that nearly every winemaker’s carefully rehearsed synopsis glossed over. There were many occasions when a wine seemed promising aromatically and on the entry of the palate, only to give a sucker punch finish that was bitter or attenuated. It is often forgotten that time in barrel and shoddy bottling can accentuate these facets. How wines finished underlies many of my assessments and the best are not exclusively big names. Many lesser-known estates furnished wines with balance and finesse from start to finish. It’s just that their frequency falls away rapidly as you move away from the apex of the hierarchy. At the other end of the spectrum, sometimes samples exhibited a sense of ersatz over-ripeness, perchance due to some estates de-leafing in July to improve air circulation and mitigate against mildew, thereby leaving bunches exposed during late summer heat waves. Consultant Thomas Duclos believes this was a trap that some fell into. Sometimes, you gamble and lose.

Deep discussion with Pierre-Olivier Clouet at Cheval Blanc. This year, more than ever, it was vital to obtain insights from winemakers and Clouet is always one of the most refreshingly candid.

Another caveat is that some estates didn’t control yields. Green harvesting in July was an important factor in reducing and concentrating fruit. Sometimes, there is dilution on the finish, plus a tangible lack of grip so that the wine seems to drift away. Lack of concentration can be remedied by bleeding vats or saignée, particularly for the Merlots. There is nothing wrong with that – there are some excellent wines as a result, though you had to make sure your fruit was phrenologically ripe, and sometimes I feel this was a recourse taken that exaggerated shortcomings. In certain situations, this lack of grip was due to modus operandi. Many fine châteaux proselytize infusion over traditional maceration through pigeage and/or remontage, a reaction against the turbocharged wines of yore. In some cases, it verges on dogma, taken too far. While I appreciate the motive and wholeheartedly prefer it to excessive maceration, some 2023s can consequently lack body and potential longevity. My senses need to hold on to something.

At the lower rungs of the Bordeaux hierarchy, the effects of mildew become more evident. It’s sly use of semantics insofar that winemakers speak of mildew pressure, a phrase that obfuscates whether or not spores actually amassed over leaves or bunches. More succumbed than is generally admitted. Visiting Bordeaux in late June, I witnessed first-hand how acute mildew was, yet it varies dramatically according to location. For example, Canon and Troplong Mondot are not far from each other, but the former received twice as much rain. Does that mean Canon suffered more mildew damage? No, because that depends on how you combatted mildew, spraying constantly and, crucially, pre-emptively (as explained by Nicolas Glumineau in my Growing Season section.) Assuming you eliminated mildew in the vineyard, then you could potentially enjoy immaculate fruit entering the cuverie come September, but clearly, not everyone could because the pressure was unrelenting, and each château reacted differently. If vineyard teams let it spin out of control, then it upended the entire growing season, irrespective of how clement the weather became afterwards. As you go down the Bordeaux hierarchy, I could smell and taste mildew in some samples as a stale, almost metallic element that spikes their ripe veneer.

There is an argument, by sheer coincidence, one espoused in the Médoc, that 2023 favors the Left Bank since the second summer benefits the later-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon. Likewise, those châteaux on the Right Bank with Cabernet Franc should hypothetically have the upper hand over pure Merlot blends. As my tastings progressed, this generalization proved unfounded, and again, we return to the fact that the vintage is one when you must assess each château as a separate entity. Human decisions were critical throughout. It should be said that some châteaux lower down the hierarchy either had the terroir, the luck or the talent to overcome obstacles and produced excellent wines that, fingers crossed, will represent great value. It’s just that the percentage of successes becomes smaller. Then again, value for money probably gets better!

The vagaries of the vintage serve to illuminate differences between châteaux at every level of the hierarchy. Pierre-Olivier Clouet at Cheval Blanc made a pertinent remark when he opined: “Last year, we said that the wine is more 2022 than Cheval Blanc, but this year it is more Cheval Blanc than 2023.” That maxim can be extended across the entire region. The growing season ruthlessly differentiates between terroirs (soil type, vine age, orientation and location) and, crucially, their individual ability to manage water. Also, vineyard husbandry, especially in terms of early season pruning and/or green harvesting. Human decisions subsequently crowbar quality levels wider, to wit, chosen picking dates and oft-forgotten, when you finished, the efficiency of the harvest team and selection of fruit. It’s not the first vintage that parses the ‘haves’ from the ‘have nots’ at a time when such glaring inequality is sometimes harder to swallow than some of the less successful wines in 2023.

This year’s Sauternes tasting was held at Château de Fargues. Pictured is 17th generation proprietor Philippe de Lur Saluces who took over from his father after his passing last year, together with estate manager François Amirault.

Final Thoughts

Leaf back through the pages of Bordeaux’s history, and you find haloed vintages born at inopportune moments: vintages buffeted by strong economic, political or social headwinds. The 1945, 1947 and 1949 triumvirate might be lionized nowadays, but they faced post-war austerity and languished unsold for years. Consider 2019, whose primeur coincided with a world shutting down by the pandemic. The 2023 vintage fits into that category as its newborn wines blink open their eyes to survey a bleak economic landscape and finger-pointing between various factions as to who’s to blame. Despite the disparity in quality, it cannot be denied that it is bejeweled with a clutch of spellbinding wines. They inevitably cluster towards the top tier and widen the gap between the “haves” and “have nots” concurrent with a pull-up scheme that will see an estimated 8,000 hectares vanish this year. Look closer and you find that Bordeaux still manifests superb wines at Cru Bourgeois and Petit Château levels. Don’t ignore them. The vintage has its virtues: pinnacles of quality, lower alcohol, traits of classic claret, freshness and sapidity.

Whether you should buy en primeur is a different question. The first releases are imminent as I write this introduction in a café six hours after returning to the UK. Instead of speculating, let’s see what prices are being demanded because deep cuts, not gestures, are the only thing that will open wallets.

Referencing my preamble, I don’t want to eat cake. I want to drink wine. Bordeaux wine. Let me afford to do that, please!

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