All change in Bordeaux | Financial Times

We’re now in the thick of the Bordeaux primeur season, when merchants and château owners pore over critics’ scores and sniff the wind to work out the right prices for the previous year’s vintage. The 2020s are being launched on to choppy waters.

Last year’s campaign was an unexpected success, largely due to an almost unprecedented combination of high quality and price reductions. The fact that everyone was sitting at home, able only to spend money via their screens, also helped.

Yet it seems unlikely that the success of the 2019 primeur campaign will be exactly repeated. Those same screens will reveal that prices for recent Bordeaux vintages have remained remarkably static for the past few years — why bother to stump up cash so long before the wine is even bottled? One argument for doing so is that 2020 was a relatively small crop and the recent frost has almost certainly shrunk the next one, which may result in prices rising over time. En primeur purchasers often forget to factor in the cost of (annual) storage charges.

Admittedly, there are some stunningly good 2020s, even if the vintage is not as consistent as 2019. The Bordelais are hoping that potential buyers from the US may be encouraged by the suspension of tariffs on EU imports and their British counterparts by the strength of the pound against the euro. But all the signs indicate that Bordeaux is losing its commanding position as the only haven for wine investors’ money. Burgundy, Barolo, Champagne, Brunello, Rhône and California are now also in the frame.

To me, however, the most exciting aspect of Bordeaux today is, as usual, not commercial but what is happening in vineyards and cellars. It could be described as a revolution. From the late 1980s, there was a sense of complacency in Bordeaux. Top bordeaux sold out every year. Critics — American ones, in particular — reliably handed out rave reviews to wines that in some ways resembled Napa Valley Cabernets. Meanwhile, the region continued to be one of the world’s heaviest users of agrochemicals in the vineyard, citing its humid maritime climate, which leaves vines exposed to fungal diseases, as an excuse.

But change has been afoot. And you can taste it in the wines. As with many wine trends — the move away from international to indigenous grape varieties, for instance — change has been driven by producers more than consumers. Perhaps part of the impetus has been to make wines that producers enjoy drinking themselves. Although increasingly hot, dry summers don’t help, high alcohol levels are no longer deliberately sought; Ch Lafite 2020 is just 12.8 per cent alcohol, for example.

In general, wines are becoming much fresher and more expressive of the vineyard rather than being rich, concentrated expressions of winemaking expertise. These wines delightfully combine the classicism of traditional bordeaux with modern winemaking and vine-growing sophistication.

While I’ve been tasting samples of the embryonic 2020s, drawn from casks all over Bordeaux, my inbox has been littered with emails from their producers explaining how they have completely revolutionised their approaches.

It has been particularly heartening to note the number of samples adorned with the logo of an organic certification body, something that would have been unthinkable 20 — perhaps even 10 — years ago. Admittedly, the châteaux determined to reduce their dependence on herbicides, pesticides and fungicide sprays to fight mildew and rot have been helped by the fact that summers have been getting drier, but there is clearly no shortage of well-meaning intent.

In her recent book Inside Bordeaux, Jane Anson was able to include a long list of influential properties that are converting to organic or even biodynamic viticulture, which is more demanding. Notable pioneers have been Chx Ausone, Durfort‑Vivens, Gruaud-Larose, Guiraud, Latour, Montrose, Palmer, Pontet-Canet and Smith Haut Lafitte, but countless others are following in their wake.

The emphasis on vineyard more than cellar is accompanied by much greater understanding of — and response to — the characteristics of each individual plot of vines. I first came across this approach — now known as “precision viticulture” — not in Bordeaux but Napa Valley when I visited Harlan Estate more than 20 years ago. Today, precision viticulture has been adopted by ambitious wine producers all over the world and has become de rigueur on Bordeaux’s best estates. If they can afford it, the most quality-conscious producers design individual fermentation vats to fit the volume of wine that each parcel of vines is expected to produce. They can then pick each parcel at its optimum ripeness — generally earlier than they used to.

Alexander Van Beek of Ch Giscours in Margaux is excited that they now pick not just parcel by parcel, but vine by vine. In 1996, the new Dutch owners replaced 130,000 vines, dotted throughout the estate, which had died. Since 2018, they have been picking these younger vines separately and earlier — intricate work that requires their in-house vineyard team to pass through each vineyard up to three times, an approach that rules out casual labour.

(Since 2013, vineyard workers at Harlan have been assigned their very own individual parcel. According to Cory Empting, who is in charge of wine-growing, this gives workers the opportunity “to create their masterpiece over their lifetime and through their careful stewardship”.)

At Ch Malartic Lagravière, another Bordeaux classed growth, the Bonnie family has been tilling the soil to encourage vine roots to dig deep, plunge through the layer of gravel and reach the limestone subsoil, which ensures a more even water supply to the grapes. The result has been smaller, fewer bunches and no need to thin the crop because the vine is now in harmony with its environment. “The grapes are denser, more vibrant,” says Jean-Jacques Bonnie.

Another development, according to Saskia de Rothschild at Ch Lafite, is the demise of monoculture in favour of planting hedges and trees on land previously planted exclusively with vines to create “green corridors” and encourage biodiversity that will imbue the grapes — and therefore wines — with freshness. In an email outlining their plans at Lafite, she cited Chx Lafon Rochet and Palmer as having done this already.

These and similar trends are apparent in many of the 2020s I have tasted so far. But it is also clear, especially in the Cabernet-dominant estates of Bordeaux’s left bank, that the best wines still come from those producers who can afford to exclude any less-than-satisfactory ingredients in the final blend. As usual in Bordeaux, there is a vast gap between the top and the bottom of the wine ranks.

Tasting notes on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. More stockists from Wine-searcher.com

Follow Jancis on Twitter @JancisRobinson

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