Bordeaux Vintages

Question 1

1982

Answer 1

Legendary year, the first of the modern era. Horribly expensive but veryconcentrated and so delicious. The best are still going very strong

Question 2

1989

Answer 2

Seemed an unusually hot summer at the time, producing a huge crop of rich, opulent, expensive wines, drinking astonishingly well young. Some very good right bank wines indeed. And an exceptional year for Haut-Brion.

Question 3

1990

Answer 3

Second scorching year in a row. Very ripe, alluring wines at all levels, many outstanding. The vintage character of velvety texture and luscious, almost overripe fruit is one of the easiest to spot and tends to impose itself over any geographical characteristics.

Question 4

1995

Answer 4

Hot, dry summer resulted in early harvest of healthy Merlot grapes. Relatively tannic Cabernet Sauvignon was picked after a week of mid-September rain. Generous crop levels, best in Pomerol and Pauillac.

Question 5

2000

Answer 5

Nature’s benevolence coincided with the commercial imperative to have a good vintage in this numerically exceptional year. Great consistency and balance. The petits châteaux represented some of Bordeaux’s best value for many years though most are ready to drink or even starting to decline. The best wines should last well into their second or even third decades.

Question 6

2005

Answer 6

Textbook perfection during the growing season in all respects other than price. Best kept for many a year. Quite marked tannins are too marked in some wines, notably the more modernistic St-Émilions, in which the then-prevailing fashion for extraction was taken to the limit.

Question 7

2009

Answer 7

Another stellar vintage, with higher tannin and more freshness than 2009 but comparable intensity. More appealing to classical palates.

Question 8

2010

Answer 8

Another stellar vintage, with higher tannin and more freshness than 2009 but comparable intensity. More appealing to classical palates.

Question 9

2015

Answer 9

Will this vintage adhere to Jancis’ rule of five, whereby any vintage divisible by five is of good quality? It seems so, with particularly healthy, uniform fruit at harvest. A generous flowering and hot, dry early summer was followed by a slighty cooler, damper August. Harvest was generally earlier than in 2014. Optimists are already calling it the best vintage since 2010 with early reports favouring the right bank.

Question 10

2016

Answer 10

The quality of red Bordeaux in 2016 was universally lauded – although the response to the en primeur campaign was muted. Quantity was high too, with the equivalent of 770 million bottles of wine produced. An exceptionally dry summer with cool nights eventually, thanks to mid September rain, resulted in small, thick-skinned, ripe grapes, and the wines are marked by high tannin and acidity, with superb aromatic fragrance.