Bordeaux 2021 Tasting Report: Tragic Beauty and Some Sweet Saviors

It’s already hard to remember the 2021 vintage in Bordeaux at this stage with all the recent information circulating around the world about the very good to outstanding 2023.

2021 is clearly not at the same quality level as 2023 and is even less so compared with the spectacular 2022. In fact, I would need to go back to 2014 to remember something as middle-of-the road as this. At least, the year made better wines than the insipid and fading 2013s.

But there are numerous exceptions to the overall quality of the vintage, which could have been even worse considering the extremely difficult grape-growing season, which included spring frosts, mildew, botrytis, lots of rain, a shortage of sunlight and mild temperatures during key months in the summer.

HOW CHATEAU SUDUIRAUT DEFIED NATURE TO CRAFT AN OUTSTANDING SAUTERNES 

“It was so cool during the summer that you had to be great in the vineyard.,” admitted Frederic Faye, the winemaker and manager of St Emilion’s Chateau Figeac. “Average viticulture did not do well. You had to be really on top of it.”

He added: “Our vineyard manager didn’t sleep well for many months because he was worried about all the problems in the vineyard during the growing season.”

Nevertheless, numerous wines are still worth seeking out from the vintage, particularly some incredible Sauternes, which could be compared in quality to such heralded years as 2001, 1988 and 1967. A couple of the sweet wines could be at the same level of quality as legends like 1921.

“It was tragically beautiful,” said Christian Seely, the head of AXA, which owns the historical Sauternes estate of Suduiraut, alluding to the 85 percent loss of his grape crop because of a powerful spring frost that year. “We made hardly any sweet wine, but it was one of the greatest ever. We were down to about 10 percent of normal: one hectoliter per hectare, but the average is 10 hectoliters.”

The growing season was difficult for everyone. “It was a nightmare to manage in the vineyard,” said  Pierre-Olivier Clouet of Chateau Cheval Blanc, who made a superb red through a strict selection of the best grapes in his vineyards as well as the best young wines in his cellar. “We had huge pressure with mildew, and I was not happy with what it looked like in the vineyard through the summer. Finally, we found the excellence in the wine in the cellar. Slowly we accepted that we had excellent-quality wines in the barrels.”

The best reds of 2021 highlight the old adage that “great vineyards can make great wines in difficult vintages.”

“The great terroir really adapts to harvests whether cold or hot,” said Guillaume Thienpont, the winemaker whose family is part owner of Pomerol’s Vieux Chateau Certan. “That’s what makes these vineyards so unique. They can make something great no matter what happens.”

Some winemakers and viticulturalists, such as those at Thienpont’s neighbor, Chateau Lafleur, saw 2021 in an even more positive light, particularly in comparison to  all the hot and sunny recent years. “Very early, in people’s minds, they saw 2021 as an off year,” said Lafleur’s Omri Ram. “We very early saw it as an opportunity. We were doing only solar vintages until then, and to see that we had a non-solar vintage was good for us.  We had not seen that in while, so we were very happy.”

Not everyone saw 2021 as an opportunity. A couple winemakers admitted that they needed to chaptalize their reds, a process of adding sugar to the grape must to slightly increase the alcohol in the wine during the fermentation process.

“I had some young winemakers who didn’t even know how to chaptalize,” one winemaker laughingly told me. “The vintage reminded me of cool years in the 1990s when we had to do this, but most of my team were just children. They didn’t know.”

According to Jean-Philippe Masclef,  the technical director of Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion, precise elevage, or aging of the wines in barrel, was essential to improving the quality of 2021. It gave tension and texture to both the red and white wines.

“This is one vintage where the elevage in barrel really improved the wine,” he said. “ The wood gave a little sweetness to the wines and it rounded the rather angular tannins. The angles needed to be rounded. The complexity also comes from the wood, and it makes the wine more interesting."

“2021 is really a great, great year for white,” he added. Indeed, I thought the La Mission white was better than the Haut-Brion in my tasting.

FINESSE, POLISH AND CLASSICISM

So, how are the wines? My team of tasters and I rated more than 1,600 wines in our office in Hong Kong as well as in Bordeaux. There are a lot of very good to excellent reds and whites but few very special bottles. The wines certainly don’t have the plushness of fruit and impressive structure of top vintages like the recent great trilogy of 2018, 2019 and 2020.

But the wines we rated 90 points or higher have finesse, polish and classicism in character that will tempt lovers of Bordeaux, and they won’t need to wait long to enjoy them. Some are already very drinkable. Maybe some new consumers will get the chance to explore top Bordeaux with wines like this. I used words like “caress,” “balance” and “fine” to describe the top wines in this report and in general for the best red wines of the 2021 vintage.

Even the top wines are attractive now but they should age well for the next six to eight years. “2021 is more digestible,” said Olivier Berrouet of Chateau Petrus, alluding to the wines’ lower alcohols, fresher acidity and medium bodies. “It has lots of potential good acidity, tannins and balance,” he said. “It will age well.”

READ MORE EN PRIMEUR 2023 (PART I): A RETURN TO BORDEAUX

BORDEAUX EN PRIMEUR 2023 (PART II): A VINTAGE TO LOVE, BUT AT WHAT PRICE?

Berrouet added in an earlier interview with me in 2022: “We lost like 250 hours of sunshine compared to previous vintages. The budbreak appeared at the same time as 2020, but there was a gap [delay] of three weeks until the harvest.” He said that if you accepted the “typicity of 2021” and waited for full maturity, you could pick when you wanted.

“Who knows what wines Bordeaux would have made if some sun and warmth hadn’t arrived in parts of August, September and October?” he said.

Some of the  whites, like as I said before for Sauternes, are exceptional. This is often the case in weaker vintages for reds. The cool years make wines with freshers acidity. And they are worth buying, especially the limited-production sweet wines.

ALEXIS LEVEN-MENTZELOPOULOS ON CHATEAU MARGAUX'S 2021S

WILL CHATEAU PETRUS'S 2021 STAND THE TEST OF TIME?

“White was a late harvest,” said Fabien Teitgen, the general manager and winemaker for Smith-Haut Lafitte, which makes one of the best white wines in Bordeaux. “It was a September harvest. We could wait because we had the acidity. They needed more ripeness and density and creaminess.”

The question now is when and where to buy the 2021s. Prices were too high for the wines when they were released as en primeur during the early summer of 2022. The top wines are still slightly overpriced when you compare them with the 2023 en primeur, which was just released on the market a few weeks ago, with some chateaux cutting prices 40 percent compared with the 2022. Plus, you have all the other vintages that are better priced and of better quality, even 2017.

I think the 2021s will drop in price as wine merchants sell them with reduced margins in hopes of raising cash for their businesses, especially with a decline in wine sales and a difficult global economy. Wait for a while and you may pick up some bargains with 2021 and other vintages.

When prices come down for 2021, people are going to enjoy these wines whether in a restaurant or at home. And then many more people are going to remember the vintage.

– James Suckling, Editor/Chairman

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