Vingt-Vingt Vins: Bordeaux 2020

BY NEAL MARTIN | MAY 27, 2021

Left Bank: Saint-Estèphe | Pauillac | Saint-Julien | Margaux | Pessac-Léognan and Graves | Left Bank Satellites | Sauternes

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

Bored. The Bordeaux estate manager is so bored. Instead of ironing the red carpet ready to receive the adoring masses who will anoint his 2020 “the greatest wine ever produced until spring 2022,” he sits at his desk twiddling his thumbs and looks out his window at the car-park of Tesla golf buggies supposed to ferry tasters five meters between entrance and tasting room. The corridor is barely passable thanks to the stack of unused hand-embroidered tasting booklets. Nobody will read JK Rowling’s magical prose (favorite line “Potter waved his magical wand over the vintage”) and nobody will see Spencer Tunick’s tableau vivant of the entire winemaking team posing in their birthday suits around the freezing cold winery, even the 82-year-old cellarmaster who only popped in to see how the harvest was going. The sole visitors to the château were an elderly couple who took a wrong turn. The manager’s invitation for a private tour and a dinner was declined; they had to get to the supermarket to buy dog food. 

Like a score below 99 points, COVID-19 was initially a novelty. The estate manager took it on the chin, rolled up his sleeves and reluctantly dispatched samples to his PR-approved critics, though due to a typo an entire pallet was dumped during Easter prayers outside a Methodist church in Leigh-on-Sea. The harem of pretty girls trained to greet/flirt/bat eyelids at tasters upon arrival were sent back to the agency and instead, virtual Zoom tastings were hastily organized. Inexplicably, the elderly “dog food” couple materialized during several tastings, their bloody hounds barking in the background.

But in the end, to the estate manager’s surprise, courtiers reported healthy sales of 2019, partly because of quality and partly because entire populations had bugger-all to do but booze their way through lockdown. (Marketing worded that differently.) Marketing had also promised that COVID-19 would be over by last summer, but annoyingly, people keep dying, and so the manager convenes his team to discuss their strategy for the 2020 vintage.  

“We were told that approval of a vaccine was less likely than a revision of the 1855 classification,” he begins. “Now we have so many vaccines that the INAO are considering a classification based on protection rates. I have a cunning plan.” He pulls away a velvet cloth to reveal a bottle whose label depicts a syringe. “This special cuvée is 99% Merlot and 1% vaccine. Vaccination intégrale. Everyone is scared of needles. This way, you can enjoy your wine and protect yourself from a deadly virus. It has already received 100 points from wine critics and the World Health Organization.”

Silence ensues.

“Erm… Is that legal?” pipes up head of marketing.

“You think we need some Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend?”

“No. I mean mixing pharmaceuticals with alcohol.”

“Apparently it does less harm than natural wine.” 

“Point taken.”

“Most excitingly,” the estate manager continues, wind in his sails, “Elon Muscat has promised to send a case of 2020 into space to examine whether lack of gravity affects prices. Does TCA exist in space? Do MWs lose their superhuman powers? If you send wine into a black hole, does it taste better on the other side?” 

Blank stares. He rambles incoherently, clearly suffering signs of lockdown madness.

“Instead of these cosmological conundrums,” interjects his assistant, “can you just tell us whether 2020 is any good? Marketing needs an idea of how much euphemism they should reserve.”

“Well, I’m probably biased, so let’s wait for Neal Martin’s report and see what he has to say. Given last year’s score, he’s someone I’d happily blast into space…”

The Growing Season

Let us remind ourselves of the five prerequisites set out by the late Professor Denis Dubourdieu for great Bordeaux red wines, courtesy of the University of Bordeaux:

1) and 2) Relatively quick and even flowering and fruit-set during weather that is sufficiently warm and dry to ensure good pollination and predispose toward even ripening.

3) The gradual onset of water stress thanks to a warm, dry month of July in order to slow down and then put a definitive stop to vine growth no later than véraison (color change).

4) Completely ripe grapes thanks to optimum photosynthesis in the leaves up until the harvest, without any noteworthy resumption of vegetative growth.

5) Fine (relatively dry and medium-warm) weather during the harvest, making it possible to pick the grapes in each plot at optimum ripeness without running the risk of dilution, rot, or loss of fruity aromas.

I hope the much-missed professor will not mind, but I will add a sixth: Cool nights leading up to harvest in order to maintain acidity. This is becoming increasingly vital to counterbalance higher sugar levels and maintain freshness.

Keep all these factors in mind as you read on and throughout this report.

The 2020 growing season began with an unseasonably warm winter, one that saw the highest temperatures for a century and one-third of the average frost. After the previous dry summer, vineyard managers welcomed the high rainfall, twice the average during the months of November, December and March, some châteaux reporting a year’s worth in six months. Between these, a series of storm-laden low-pressure systems swept across the region during January and February. Warm temperatures peaked at 23.1°C in Mérignac and rainfall, some 58% above average, igniting an early start to the vines’ growth cycle some three weeks earlier than usual, one of the earliest on record. A majority of a somewhat uneven bud break took place in the middle of March. The end of that month saw a dive in temperatures, down to –12°C in some locales, with snow on March 30. Thankfully, frost damage was minimal and limited to prone spots. 

April warmed up nicely to become the third warmest in half a century, behind 2007 and 2011. Coupled with rainstorms from mid-April resulting in 34% more precipitation than average, these conditions encouraged rapid shoot growth. The heaviest rain fell in Saint-Émilion, some 31mm on April 17, as well as localized hail in Saint-Émilion and parts of Castillon. May was more like summer in terms of temperature due to hot spells at the beginning and the end of the month; there were 16 days above 25°C, the fourth hottest May in 75 years.

This combination of wet and warmth provided perfect conditions for mildew, and vineyard managers had to be both vigilant and reactive, seizing every dry window to spray and protect their vines. Below-average temperatures May 10–15 coincided with another rainy spell, over 100mm falling in Listrac. This environment led to continued rapid vine growth and predicated early flowering that took place in mid- to late May rather than early June, with little coulure. Mi-fleuraison was May 26 compared to June 3 and 4 in 2018 and 2019. By now, winemakers knew that they were heading toward an early harvest. 

June began cool and overcast, seeing 148 fewer sunshine hours than normal, which retarded vine growth – put the brakes on, so to speak. Persistent rain increased mildew pressure, provoking painful memories of 2018, some estates suffering considerable losses with some millerandage. Consequently, the second condition for an ideal red wine vintage, the absence of rainfall after fruit set, was not entirely fulfilled.

However, from the final week of June, the weather changed again and there followed nearly two months of warm and extremely dry conditions. Overall, the Gironde received an average of just 10mm of rain in July, some estates recording less than 5mm while several stated that not a single drop fell during the 54-day dry period. Hydric stress was initially contained by the preceding months of rain, with only minor stress noticeable on young vines located on free-draining gravel and sandy soils. (Here is where clayey soils, up in Saint-Estèphe and, of course, on the Right Bank, were beneficial because of their moisture-retaining capacity.) The water deficit still led to uneven véraison that slowed down in the most stressed plots, even if mi-véraison on August 1 was six days earlier than average. By early August, winemakers became more concerned as vines began to suffer during a heat wave in the second week of the month, when night temperatures remained above 20°C, giving the vines no time to rest. 

This heat triggered convectional storms between August 9 and 14, a crucial factor in the 2020 growing season. These alleviated the hydric stress, though the compacted, sometimes concrete-hard clay soils meant that the rain could wash straight off the vineyard instead of penetrating the soil. The amount of rainfall varied per appellation, essentially highest in the northern Médoc, Saint-Estèphe (110mm and over), 80–90 mm in Saint-Julien, 60mm in Margaux, around 50mm in Pessac-Léognan and then down to 20–30mm on the Right Bank in Saint-Émilion and Pomerol. This exaggerated the unevenness of the vintage between appellations and terroirs, depending on grape varieties and vine age. It is a compromise with respect to one of the prerequisites of a great vintage, as set out by Prof. Dubourdieu –  that is to say, gradual water stress and dryness not inhibiting vine growth after véraison. It also swelled the Merlot and Petit Verdot berries more than the Cabernet Sauvignon, predicating a greater proportion of this variety in some blends.