2016 Bordeaux: A Vintage for Today’s Bordeaux Wine Lovers

1322 TASTING NOTES
Monday, Feb 04, 2019

chateau of Lafite after our tasting of 2016.
Château Lafite Rothschild.

Some winemakers in Bordeaux are calling the 2016 vintage part of “the second coming of Bordeaux” due to the overall excellent quality of the wines and their unique character. And after tasting more than 1,300 wines from 2016 a few weeks ago in Bordeaux, I must agree.  

After the superb 2015, Bordeaux is showing great quality in the bottle once again with many outstanding 2016s. 

I tasted the newest vintage in bottle from Bordeaux with JamesSuckling.com senior editors Nick Stock and Stuart Pigott in January. We were impressed with the freshness and structure of the reds and whites produced in 2016 as well as their purity and transparency.  

The wines have a classicism that reminds me of the great wines of the 1980s, but they have much more precision and clarity due to advances in viticulture and winemaking since then. And they seem much less manipulated than some Bordeaux from the first decade of this century when some producers were making more marketing-driven wines.  

“It is a second coming of age of Bordeaux,” says Mathieu Chardonnier, head of the negociant house of CVBG which also owns a number of top Bordeaux wine estates and sells millions of cases of Bordeaux each year. “It takes confidence to do less to get more in your winemaking and to believe in what you do. But that’s what many of us are doing in Bordeaux now. We made great wines in Bordeaux in 2015 and 2016. They are some of the best ever.” 

I rated eight wines with perfect scores in 2016 and 14 in 2015. The two vintages made some extraordinary wines. I think that 2015 made more truly great wines than 2016, but the latter is very close and slightly more homogenous in quality. This means you can buy just about anything bottled in Bordeaux in the 2016 vintage from the simplest Bordeaux to the grandest of classified growths or trophy wines from the Right Bank and be assured you’re getting a top-quality wine. 

I took a quick look at our ratings for the two vintages and 2015 seems to have the slight edge for great wines. We gave 149 wines 95 points or more from 2015, while 2016 had 100 wines at the same level. The 2016 vintage has the advantage for 90-plus rated wines with 927 in that range compared to 864 in 2015. We reviewed 1,256 wines in the 2015 vintage and 1,342 in 2016. 

2016 Bordeaux 100-point wines 

My 100-point rated wines from the 2016 vintage include: Cos-d'Estournel, Haut-Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Le Pin, Léoville Las Cases, Mouton Rothschild, Pavie, and Pétrus. All these properties produced evocative and emotional wines that show a beauty and structure that reminds me of some of the best wines of my 38-year career as a wine critic. (Only Le Pin, Pavie and Pétrus were 100 points in both years.) 

“The 2016 Petrus is exactly the same number (alcohol, pH, tannin) as 2015; so you can’t tell what a wine is just from the numbers,” says Olivier Berrouet, winemaker at Château Pétrus.  “But the 2016 is different. We had more freshness in 2016. It is a difference in merlot. It is another face of Pétrus. I like to compare 2016 to the 1971 and the 2015 to the 1970.” 

I have been lucky enough to drink a number of bottles of both the 1971 and 1970 Pétrus (albeit a long time ago) and they are superbly balanced and beautiful bottles. It’s hard to say which is better, with the 1970 showing more richness and the 1971 more energy. Most winemakers use more recent comparisons such as 2010 and 2009.

About half of those I spoke to said that 2016 was like 2010 and half like 2009. What is clear is that 2016 bottles have about 1 percent less alcohol than the 2015s and slightly more acidity. This gives the 2016 reds a slightly less ripe and more tannic mouthfeel than the 2015s. It suggests the 2016s will age slightly better than the 2015s, but I don’t think it matters much as both vintages have a long life ahead.   

Cos d’Estournel red and white
Cos d’Estournel red and white in 2016 were some of our top wines in their respective categories.

2016 Bordeaux white wines 

Sweet whites are excellent in 2016 even though some wine producers say noble rot was not as prevalent as in some top vintages. It arrived late in the harvest. We found that the top Sauternes are comparable to 2015 in quality. Perhaps the 2016s are a little bit more fruit forward and ripe compared to the 2015s, which appear to have more botrytis character. Many outstanding dry whites also are available in 2016 and they have slightly more freshness and acidity than their counterparts in 2015. 

“The 2016 is a history of blood and sweat,” says Baptiste Guinaudeau, winemaker at Pomerol’s Château Lafleur. “We were not sure how it would be at the beginning. We came out of 2015 and the growing season started cold and wet. We had so much trouble in the vineyard and so much work. And from June to September it was so dry and hot. We honestly couldn’t understand how it came together. We didn’t know that 2016 was a great year when we made it, but it is!”   

Tasting with Alexandre and Guillaume Thienpont
Tasting with Alexandre and Guillaume Thienpont of Château Le Pin and Vieux Château Certan.

2016 vs 2015 Bordeaux: Which is better? 

Indeed, 2016 is a top vintage. But it’s difficult to make many generalities about it. Overall, I think that 2016 was more of a cabernet sauvignon vintage and the northern Medoc made the best wines including those in the appellations of Saint-Estèphe, Pauillac and St. Julien.

However, some superb wines were also made in all the key appellations regardless of whether they were Left or Right Bank.  

I can confirm what I thought when I tasted hundreds of 2016s from barrel in Spring 2017: the 2016 is one of the best vintages since 2010. I would rate it ahead of 2000 and 2003, as well as every vintage in the 1990s except 1990 itself. The only modern vintages that rate better are 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2015 – the latter only by a hair.   

Château Pavie
Tasting at Château Pavie with owner Gerard Perse.

Others may disagree, including at least half of the 40 or so vintners we spoke to. Some of this may be because the 2016 is the most recent vintage on the market. They want to sell it. But I understand the debate. Similar debates still go on regarding the 1989 and 1990, 1995 and 1996, and 2009 and 2010. Prices don’t seem to be much of a factor as wine merchants in Bordeaux say that 2015 and 2016 wines are about the same price now, even though 2015 was significantly less expensive at the beginning. 

To conclude, I want to buy a number of wines in 2016 just like I did in 2015.  And I recommend you do the same if you love excellent Bordeaux. The two vintages produced wines that are incomparable to other reds made in the world. And the wonderful balance, intensity and clarity of the wines are so, so Bordeaux today. — James Suckling, CEO & Editor

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