Bordeaux Annual Report: Unicorns Cushion 2021’s Rough Ride

You can be negative or positive about the 2021 vintage in Bordeaux. The region’s newest year in barrel was one of the most difficult in two decades because of hellish grape-growing conditions, yet at the same time some of Bordeaux’s best winemakers made excellent wines. We even found a few unicorn whites and reds.

The unicorns are the most exciting thing about 2021, after Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt and I rated more than 800 wines in May. Who would have thought that winemakers could produce such wines as a phenomenal pure merlot with all the class and depth of a great year from the 1980s, while a number of Sauternes producers made sweet wines that resemble some of the legendary years, such as 2001, 1990, 1959 and 1921.

“2021 is a great year for all white wines,” said Pierre Lurton, the head of the best Bordeaux wine estates of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, including Chateau d’Yquem and Cheval Blanc. “It is a great year for great soil. You needed great soil to absorb the rain.”

Rain was not the only problem in 2021. It’s hard to think of a calamity during the grape-growing season that didn’t happen that year. As I wrote in our first report on Bordeaux earlier this month, the 2021 grape-growing season was one of the most difficult on record, giving wine producers just about every problem imaginable including spring frosts, mildew, botrytis, lots of rain, a shortage of sunlight and mild temperatures during key months in the summer.

“We lost like 250 hours of sunshine compared to previous vintages,” said Olivier Berrouet, winemaker of Chateau Petrus. “The bud break appeared at the same time as 2020, but there was a gap [delay] of three weeks for the harvest.” According to Berrouet, if you accepted the “typicity of 2021” and waited for full maturity, in the end there was little pressure at harvest. Who knows what wines Bordeaux would have made if some sun and warmth hadn’t arrived in parts of August, September and October?

“What was important was to not be too focused on the challenges,” said Baptiste Guinaudeau, the dynamic owner of the legendary Pomerol estate Chateau Lafleur, who made one of our unicorn wines in 2021. “That’s dangerous. You can’t fight mother nature all the time. You had to remember that you are vignerons [viticulturalists] and you needed to be one from April 1. Otherwise, some people were just frost fighters. You had to do everything in 2021.”

Added Omri Ram, the winemaker and viticulturalist at Lafleur: “You had to be reactive and be in the vineyard all the time. You needed to make the right decisions. Everyone lived the vintage in a totally different way and the ending points are very different. The only thing all the chateaux have in common in 2021 was lack of sleep. It took a lot of work.”

It really is hard to generalize about the vintage. Indeed, every chateau and domaine seem to have their own story about the year, and how they dealt with the problems and made their wines. Just considering the production of wine per hectare shows the heterogeneity of the situation. For example, the estate of Suduiraut in Sauternes produced just under one hectoliter of wine per hectare while Chateau Margaux had a normal production of about 35 hectoliters per hectare. Production cuts were due mostly to frost and mildew.

Winemakers also had different ways to cope with the dilution or lightness of the vintage, including bleeding vats before the fermentation and maceration, reverse osmosis and chapitalization (adding sugar to the must before fermentation to increase alcohol levels). They were open about it when asked. And we could not find much difference in the approaches while tasting barrel samples.

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF FRANCE 2021

VINTAGE COMPARISON

It was equally difficult to come up with a vintage comparison for 2021, which I pointed out in my earlier en primeur story. All the wines are different but most of the reds we tasted do have the same character of lower alcohol, medium body and fresher acidities. For the Left Bank, I am thinking that the vintage might compare to something like 1996 because of the rain and lack of sunshine for both vintages. The Right Bank could be more like 1994, which made fresh and bright reds in Pomerol and St. Emilion. But it’s not all that accurate a likeness.

“Some people said it is like the years of 1980s and 1990s, but that’s not my opinion,” said Philippe Bascaules, the technical director of Chateau Margaux. “It’s not possible. We don’t have the same yields. In style, it’s like the 1996 but I think it’s very perfumed and very silky. It’s easy to drink. You can drink it right away.”

Bascaules made one of our favorite wines of the 2021 vintage. It was the dry white of the estate: Pavilion Blanc du Château Margaux. The wine is sensational with an electric acidity and tension. It has a pH of about 3.1 and extremely intense acidity with ripeness of fruit in the center palate. Bascaules thinks it is the estate’s greatest white ever. It’s the first time I have ever rated the white higher than the red at Margaux. But that’s all part of the fascination of the vintage. The bizarre weather conditions certainly produced some freaky wines, both good and bad.

For Sauternes, across the dozen or so sweet wines that we tasted, we were impressed by the purity, drive and concentration of botrytis character.

“There is similarity of 2021 to 2001, where we had a long harvest and achieved complexity from low alcohol potential at the start of harvest and very high at the end,” Lurton said.

Unfortunately, very little Sauternes was made this year. But stellar examples include Château Lafaurie-Peyraguey Sauternes 2021 and Château Sigalas Rabaud Sauternes 2021, which have adjacent parcels of clay soils, as well as Château Suduiraut Sauternes 2021. These displayed that distinct spicy, almost savory character of a great Sauternes, where the concentration and balance make you almost forget about the sweetness.

En primeur prices, so far, have also had their strange moments, with some chateau increasing from 2020 and most others staying the same. Obviously, 2020 is a superior vintage to 2021 and the last of a trilogy of top years. Paying the same price, or higher, for 2021 as it sits in barrel makes no sense to me except with a few wines such as rarified Sauternes, fantastic whites and special reds, mostly from Pomerol.

READ MORE BEAUJOLAIS: THE TASTE OF THE FUTURE AND MORE GREAT DISCOVERIES

Here is my list for wines I might buy en primeur in 2021: Pavillon Blanc du Château Margaux Bordeaux Blanc, Château Smith-Haut-Lafitte Pessac-Léognan Blanc, Château Haut-Brion Pessac-Léognan Blanc, Château Le Pin Pomerol, Château Lafleur Pomerol, Château Suduiraut Sauternes, Château Sigalas Rabaud Sauternes, Domaine de Chevalier Pessac-Léognan Blanc and Château Pétrus Pomerol 2021. Otherwise, it’s best to wait because I don’t think prices will increase when they are released on the market in two years in bottle. I heard from a number of chateaux that American buyers are particularly uninterested in 2021, but this is as expected since historically they usually only buy futures in top years.

And in the end it probably doesn’t matter about en primeur 2021. The 2021s will be bought and consumed in the near future because of their drinkability and freshness – a hallmark of the year and proof that the best winemakers can produce good to outstanding wines in just about any year.

– James Suckling, Editor/Chairman, and Claire Nesbitt, Associate Editor