Bordeaux’s New Year: A Difficult 2021 Comes out Easy (Special Weekly Tasting Report)

It’s hard to think of a vintage to compare with Bordeaux’s new year, which is currently on show throughout the region. I have been tasting new barrel samples in France’s most famous wine area for 39 years now and I have never encountered something like 2021. Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt and I have already rated more than 400 wines since arriving in Bordeaux over the weekend and it’s been great fun and exciting to taste the young wines, both reds and whites, as well as speak with winemakers and visit wineries.

What strikes us is the bright and fresh acidity and relatively low alcohol of the wines. There is an almost crunchy sensibility to so many of the wines with an immediate drinkability to them. They are very easy to taste in most cases and don’t overwhelm you quickly, compared with when we tasted current excellent years such as 2020, 2019 and 2018. The reds we have rated so far are mostly about 13 to 13.5 percent alcohol with pHs of about 3.4 to 3.65. A highly regarded year such as 2020 or 2019 would be one of two degrees of alcohol higher with much lower acidities. The bottom line is that 2021 lacked sunshine.

“It’s hard to believe that a year ago we were already battling the bad weather in the vineyards,” one producer we talked to on Tuesday said with a friendly smile as we were leaving his chateau after tasting his wine. “It’s nice to have a break during the growing season,” he added, referring to the warm and sunny conditions in Bordeaux right now, compared with the wet and cooler weather last year.

Wine producers know that 2021 is not a great year. They just seem happy that it’s over and that they made very good to outstanding wines. Of course, this is only with the top wineries of Bordeaux, mostly the stars that have a market with en primeur – the annual release of wines about two years before they are bottled and sold on the market. Everyone who makes wine that we’ve spoken to has said the vintage is extremely heterogenous and that lesser-known wineries made weak wines. We have only found this in lesser appellations so far.

The fact that the wines show so well and are so clean and balanced highlights the viticultural and winemaking prowess of Bordeaux. Just about every vintner and winemaker we meet say that 2021 was a year for the “vigneron,” or viticulturalist. That’s to say that they had to spend thousands of hours in their vineyards protecting and reacting to all the problems with their crop.

“We worked the hardest ever,” said Marielle Cazaux, the winemaker and managing director of Pomerol’s Chateau La Conseillante. “We had a little bit of luck. August and October were quite good. We took the chance, and the rain didn’t come and we made a late harvest.”

READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF FRANCE 2021

The 2021 grape-growing season was one of the most difficult on record, giving wine producers just about every calamity imaginable, including spring frosts, mildew, botrytis, lots of rain, a shortage of sunlight and mild temperatures during key months in the summer. If the sun and warmth hadn’t arrived in parts of August, September and October, who knows what the wines would have been like?

“You can’t say that it is a bad year,” Michel Rolland said on Monday in his laboratory, where we tasted about 180 wines. Rolland and his team consult for hundreds of wineries and producers in Bordeaux as well as dozens in the world. “There are some really good wines, but after 2018, 2019 and 2020, it’s not easy. It was complicated. It was not a bad year. Everyone has their opinion. There are some beautiful wines. They are easy wines to taste.”

Our best red wines rated so far, as expected, were from top names in their respective appellations. But the highest rating we gave was 98-99  points, and a few others received scores just below that. This shows that 2021 doesn’t have the capability so far to produce great wines of such prestigious vintages as 2020, 2019 or 2018 – but it is close. Our best wines so far are Le Pin, Lafleur and Petrus.

THE GRAPES GIVETH, THE GRAPES TAKETH AWAY

Not only did wineries need to be extremely attentive in their vineyards, they also needed to be precise and watchful, yet subtle, in their cellars. Although we have not found many dry and hollow young wines, most of the winemakers we spoke to mentioned that they were very soft and refined in their cellar techniques, and those who tried to make more than what the grapes gave them made overextracted and unpleasant wines. Producers don’t like to speak about it but some used reverse osmosis or deacidified or used other methods to make their wines better. Regardless, we looked for balance and depth in the best wines of 2021.

“Those who wanted to make more than the grapes gave them made wines hard with a bitterness and dry tannins,” said Thomas Duclos, a young consulting enologist who advocates gentle and subtle winemaking methodology in France. “We could make some pretty wines but not great wines. The best terroirs made really pretty wines. That’s really the description. When the wines are balanced, they taste really well.”

Indeed, so many of the wines are delicious to taste even though they may not be the most structured. Luckily, we also like acid-driven wines. They will be very attractive when they are released in bottle on the market in 18 months to two years. But I think they will also age nicely. I remember drinking a bottle of 1898 Lafite at the chateau to celebrate its 150^th anniversary of being owned by the Rothschild family and it had similar freshness and even lower alcohol. This is just to say that fresh and balanced wines can improve with age.

The one big story that we are pursuing at the moment is Sauternes. The sweet wines of Bordeaux may be the miracle of the harvest. We have only tasted four Sauternes so far and they show great promise. The Château Lafaurie-Peyraguey Sauternes 2021 is perhaps the greatest sweet wine produced in 100 years at the property.

“What little grapes we had at the property developed incredible botrytis,” said Valerie Lavigne-Cruege, the winemaker for the property. She said that the estate was hammered by frost in the spring and lost most of its crop, but added that the few grapes left made absolute nectar. We were stunned by the intensity and power of this wine, with so much spicy, dried mushroom character from the powerful botrytis. We look forward to tasting more Sauternes, particularly Chateau d’Yquem.

The few dry whites we have tasted were also excellent quality as expected, so we look forward to more outstanding bottles as our tastings continue.

Some 2021 wines are already coming out on the market and the first indication is not good, in my opinion. Prices are either the same as last year or slightly higher. Winemakers say this is because their costs of production have increased significantly because of inflation, price increases in dry goods and logistics. Items such as bottles, capsules, corks and labels have increased 30 to 40 percent. Shipping costs have doubled or even tripled.

It will be interesting see how the market reacts. It’s tough for all of us at the moment with inflation, and wine purchases remain part of most people’s disposable incomes. The thought of an expensive new wine that won’t be in bottle for another two years probably won’t be very attractive to many people at the moment. But we will see.

What we know now is that 2021 produced some pretty and lively young reds wines and some fantastic whites. And one day in the near future, or many years ahead, they will be opened and enjoyed.

“People kept asking me during en primeur how long the 2021 will age, and I kept saying that they can drink it when they want,” said Edouard Vauthier, whose family owns Chateau Ausone, among other estates. “You can drink them young and age them as well. It’s what we are looking for now.”

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

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated during the past week by James Suckling and the other tasters at JamesSuckling.com. They include many latest releases not yet available on the market, but which will be available soon. Some will be included in upcoming tasting reports.

Note: You can sort the wines below by country, vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.