Early Bordeaux 2025 en primeur sales rose on last year’s weak 2024-vintage campaign, according to Geraint Carter of international merchant Bordeaux Index and Miles Davis of Vinum Fine Wines. Farr Vintners’ Thomas Parker MW said sales were up ‘a little’ although below the level of five years ago.

Cheval Blanc 2025 was one success. ‘We sold everything we could get,’ said Carter.

Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, said that the St-Emilion estate released everything it made after especially low yields.

Parker said Batailley and Lynch-Bages were top sellers. Will Hargrove, head of fine wine at Corney & Barrow, cited interest in Lafite, plus Mitjavile and Moueix offers, but also said: ‘Demand has been slower than the vintage deserves.’

Despite high scores, Bordeaux 2025 is entering a world of macroeconomic uncertainty. Carter said en primeur is largely ‘an amplification of what’s going on in the [wine] market, and the market is flat.’

He agreed it’s a great time to be a Bordeaux drinker, with good availability of high-quality vintages, but said 2025 release prices weren’t compelling enough in a tough environment.

He also highlighted the value offered by the well-regarded 2019 vintage (see table), with several years of bottleageing (and storage costs) under its belt.

Liv-ex’s Bordeaux 500 index – one indicator of pricing in the secondary market – was down 16.5% in value over five years to the end of May 2026.

While stable year-to-date, it was back to mid-2016 levels. Châteaux haven’t stood still. For example, Liv-ex data showed Lafite 2025’s release price was up year-on-year but otherwise the lowest of the past decade.

Vinum’s Davis said many 2025 en primeur prices looked relatively reasonable. He said there’s an ‘amazing opportunity’ for younger collectors to build a drinking cellar.

In his view, it’s not an investment market and people aren’t buying to make money, but he added: ‘There will be a time when we look back at these prices and think, were they really that cheap?’

Bordeaux 2025 vs 2019: A pricing snapshot

Bordeaux Index’s Geraint Carter said 2019 is a good-quality vintage that may present value for collectors who are considering alternatives to 2025 en primeur releases.

While some 2019s look more expensive than corresponding 2025s at face value, they have already been aged for several years.

DATA SUPPLIED BY BORDEAUX INDEX/LIVETRADE

The Bordeaux Index view

Fine wine & spirits specialist Bordeaux Index kindly sponsors this section of Decanter, and provides its view on the market here every issue. It can be found at bordeauxindex.com

En primeur own goals

The old maxim is that you can only control what you can control. For en primeur, that boils down to two things: the price and the offer.

Leaving the price to one side, en primeur today is, in essence, a marketing event. Bordeaux enjoys an extraordinary privilege: for a few weeks each year, the attention of the fine wine world is focused almost entirely on the region.

That opportunity should be cherished. Yet the 2025 campaign has felt like a masterclass in how to squander momentum.

Late April’s early releases were followed by two weeks of near silence, before a few releases around the holidays and a flood of big names in the closing stages.

In what was always going to be a difficult campaign, allowing interest to dissipate for weeks at a time was bizarre. For en primeur to succeed, the process has to feel transparent.

Visibility has improved, but buyers increasingly suspect that release quantities are being managed more aggressively, which feeds a damaging conclusion that the wine will be as easy, and quite likely cheaper, to buy in a few years.

Direct consumer engagement is also better, but in a world of abundant choice, the case for greater outreach is stronger than ever.

It’s difficult and expensive, yet it’s one of the few levers still entirely within Bordeaux’s control. If consumers are worth courting, then chances to do so must be seized wholeheartedly.

Now, did someone mention price?

Leroy leads Burgundy mega-sale

Wealthy collectors’ thirst for superstar Burgundy has appeared undimmed at recent US auctions, led by notable rarities from Domaines Leroy and Georges Roumier.

Auction house Hart Davis Hart (HDH) claimed a new record auction price for a single bottle of Domaine Leroy wine after selling the Burgundy producer’s Musigny Grand Cru 2015 for $95,600 (£71,374), including buyer’s premium (hammer price $80,000; high estimate $30,000).

It was from the ‘Orion Collection’ that formed part of a three-day auction marathon in May. All 3,563 lots offered found buyers, generating sales of $14.66m.

‘The market remains incredibly robust,’ said Hart Davis Hart CEO Paul Hart. Leroy’s Musigny is among the world’s most expensive wines, although prices can vary.

From the same collection, HDH sold single bottles of 2011 and 2013 for $41,825 and $35,850 respectively (high e: $30,000 and $28,000). In New York in June, a Christie’s auction of wines from ‘a Silicon Valley pioneer’ was also 100% sold.

Six bottles of Georges Roumier, Bonne-Mares 1971 fetched $100,000, including buyer’s premium (high e: $35,000).

In Hong Kong, meanwhile, rare Bordeaux was prominent as Bonhams offered wines from fashion designer Marie France van Damme.

A bottle of Saute Loup 2010, rarely sighted and made by Pomerol icon Petrus, sold for HK$13,750 (£1,314), including buyer’s premium (high e: HK$9,500).

A bottle of legendary Petrus 1961 fetched HK$81,250 (high e: HK$70,000).

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The 2009 Bordeaux vintage has lost none of its power to charm and captivate.

A recent tasting in Atlanta showed that most of these wines are still in their first blush of youth, and the best will live for decades.

The intervening years have only confirmed what we suspected even on release – this is among the epochal vintages from Bordeaux.

It represents a turning point in the wines of Bordeaux in so many ways – the warming climate, the changing styles, the fashion for the wines – yet 2009 stands alone.

The chance to revisit these wines was exciting for all the tasters. Michael Davis, principal at Hart Davis Hart auction house in the US, expressed it best when he said that for him 2009 was 'joyful and expressive'.

The alluring 2009 style

There were several top-flight vintages in the first decade of the new century, beginning with superb millennial vintage, the almost unbearably hot 2003 that delivered sybaritic delights; the monumental 2005, still tannic and not yet ready to drink, with the charming 2006 and 2008 just behind.

There are many wine lovers, however, who would argue that the finest vintage of the decade was 2009. The wines are voluptuous, accessible, and hedonistic, yet structured enough to last.

It occurred to me while tasting through these two dozen wines that 2009 resembles the wines from 1982, and I began to think of 2009 as an updated version of 1982 – almost a ‘1982.2’.

The wines in general are substantial and have abundant extract; lots of tannin yet no astringency; enough acidity to give definition but not so much as to make them hard or unyielding; and a sweet, ripe character to the fruit with no sense of it being baked or over-ripe.

The secret to the seductive nature of the fruit in 2009 is that the vines never shut down during the growing season, as they do in the face of excessive heat or drought.

There was just enough water in July and August to keep the vines ripening the fruit throughout the season, and while there were hot days (and plenty of sunshine), the grapes did not suffer the excessive heat spikes that they saw in 2000 or 2003.

The weather behind the magic

The year got off to an appropriate start with a cold, wet winter that plunged the vines into dormancy, refilled the water table, ensuring that budbreak didn't start too early.

There was no hint of spring frost, and although there was a hail storm on 11 May, it did not damage the best vines.

Flowering happened early and finished quickly, setting a large crop on the vines. Crucially, the growing season was hot and sunny, but not so much as to interrupt the grapes gentle ripening.

The region saw moderate rainfall on 18, 19, and 20 September, but there was no further rain until the harvest was complete.

The key to success was to wait until after the rain to pick the Merlot, and to wait until the Cabernet was fully ripe, beginning in mid-October.

Because of the gentle nature of the growing season, the vines ripened to levels not often seen in Bordeaux – mostly over 14% on the Left Bank and up to (and sometimes beyond) 15% on the Right Bank.

If picked at the right time, both Cabernet and Merlot were successful.

Because of the lush, forward character these conditions delivered, these powerful wines are beginning to open up now.

While it is not too early to pull some corks, the best of these wines should continue to improve for decades to come.

From boom to bargain: The market context

When the 2009 vintage came to market, the world was in love with Bordeaux wine. Demand was booming in Asia, and the 2008 financial crisis was disappearing in the rear window.

With consumers in the UK, US, and Hong Kong all avidly chasing top Bordeaux wines, the 2009 primeurs offers were optimistic, and prices seemed dear indeed.

In the intervening 15 years since this primeurs campaign, however, much has changed – Bordeaux wines have lost some of their shine, the global wine market is depressed, and producers are sitting on significant stocks.

As a consequence, prices for these sumptuous wines have not increased greatly, and are, in some cases, lower today than they were upon release.

For a buyer looking for immediate pleasure, long-term cellaring potential, and perhaps smart appreciation, the 2009 vintage represents a wonderful opportunity.

Standout performers

Among the delights of the tasting were second growths that were drinking like firsts, particularly Léoville-Las Cases, Léoville-Poyferré, Pichon-Baron and Gruaud-Larose (as well as perennial overachieving fifth growth Pontet-Canet).

There were also strong performances further down the price ladder like Poujeaux and Malescot-Saint-Exupéry.

Although were some disappointments – I felt that both Lynch-Bages and Pavie should have done better given the conditions – the best wines of the vintage are classics that will long outlive most of us, particularly Margaux and Lafite, with Cheval, Mouton, and La Mission Haut-Brion not far behind.

Bordeaux 2009: 24 top wines from this epochal vintage

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On a quiet road in St-Emilion, two tall stone pillars mark the entrance to small, idyllic, grand cru classé Château Corbin.

Turn in and follow the gravel drive lined with old horse-chestnut trees. You’ll come to an iron gate that opens to a courtyard and a white-shuttered 18^th century château of cream-coloured stone, complete with romantic tower.

Outbuildings on either side hold the vat cellar and the office; the surround is well-tended Merlot and Cabernet Franc vines, the main grapes of St-Emilion.

This elegant property is one of my favourites in Bordeaux. Unlike the left bank’s grand, imposing châteaux with shiny new chais designed by famous architects, Corbin feels intimate, charming, jewel-like.

You fantasise about living there. And it has a tradition of being run by talented women.

The latest is Anabelle Cruse-Bardinet, who took over in 1999, and did that year’s harvest with a baby in her arms, she tells me as we tour the vines and cellar.

Now she’s wearing fashionable black sunglasses and boots, black slacks, and a man’s Rolex.

Since just before the 21^st century began, she’s been revamping this beautiful estate and perfecting its wines.

As she began, a Right Bank group of rebels called garagistes dominated the conversation in St-Emilion with their controversial, flamboyant, oaky reds that achieved cult status thanks to the enthusiasm of critic Robert Parker.

But Cruse-Bardinet’s goal from the beginning was different: to hone a wine style that’s all about elegance, purity, and Corbin’s terroir. And her recent vintages are the best yet.

A long history, and trailblazing women

In the 13^th century, Corbin’s land was the central part of a large fiefdom belonging to local lord Arnaud de Corbin.

One later owner, it’s believed, was the son of King Edward III of England, known as the Black Prince who was, for a short while, direct ruler of Gascony and lived in Bordeaux.

Time saw the eventual breakup of the huge property. A map dating to 1811 shows five châteaux that include ‘Corbin’ as part of their names, but Château Corbin is the original one.

By the 19th^th century Corbin belonged to négociant Jean Chaperon-Grangère, mayor of Libourne, and his death started a tradition of women managing the estate, his widow Marguerite taking charge from 1832 to 1845.

Jean-Paul Chaperon, the distant cousin who inherited next, combined Corbin with neighbouring Château Jean Faure for some 50 years.

Cruse-Bardinet’s great grandparents, négociant Joseph Guiraud and his wife Yvonne, who bought Corbin in 1924 ushered in a new era.

During the Second World War, their daughter, Marie Joseph, took over when her husband was made a prisoner of war. She was the second woman to run the estate.

Later, her parents purchased Chateau Certan-Guiraud in Pomerol, which also came under her purview and she ran both for decades.

And when the St-Emilion classification system was established in 1955, Corbin was ranked grand cru classé. Her eventual consultant? Michel Rolland.

Anabelle, born in 1967, is the third woman to shape the estate’s fortunes. You could say that winemaking and Corbin were her destiny.

She’s a member of the Cruse family – her cousin is Emmanuel Cruse of Château d’Issan – major players in the Bordeaux wine trade for seven generations.

She grew up at Château Laujac, a 400-hectare estate in the north Médoc where her winemaking father farmed a 70 hectare vineyard and managed a herd of 500 cows.

But during her childhood she also spent a month each year during harvest at Corbin, owned by her mother’s family.

‘It was more important than school,’ she says. ‘A retired teacher came to the château to teach us every day after we picked grapes.’

Corbin's call

Cruse-Bardinet’s first job after studying oenology at University of Bordeaux was at Château Branaire-Ducru, and she worked in California at Sterling Vineyards, and for several years at Laujac.

But her grandmother, who wanted her to take over Corbin, frequently requested her help, and eventually the estate’s charm seduced her.

As in so many Bordeaux wine families, a tangle of family ownership conflicts reigned for many years.

The fighting was resolved in 1999, when one part of the family took control of Certan-Guiraud and sold to Christian Moueix, who renamed it Hosanna.

Cruse-Bardinet, her sisters, and grandmother retained Corbin until 2007, when Cruse Bardinet and her husband Sebastien were able take complete ownership.

The rise of women was just beginning in Bordeaux when she took on the winemaking role at Corbin.

The challenges required immediate judgment and investment. Luckily, she jokes, her parents educated her on the value of work.

The vineyard, which surrounds the château, wasn’t in bad shape, but needed a new drainage system.

Revamping the estate

Lying on the border of Pomerol, the terroir is completely different from the famous limestone plateau surrounding St-Emilion village.

The six hectares on the Pomerol side of the vineyard are clay; the other seven hectares are ancient sandy gravel over an iron-rich clay subsoil.

A study of the terroir pointed to new rootstocks, clones, and replacing the vines in many plots.

There was no crush pad for the picked grapes. They lacked a sorting table and decent crusher and had to upgrade the cellar with new temperature-controlled vats.

The château itself hadn’t been lived in for years and required renovation. Michel Rolland’s consulting team helped advise on vinification.

The wines improved quickly, and the 2009 hit the jackpot, with international praise for its deep, ripe, generous fruit, sumptuous texture and oh-so-reasonable price.

A few years later came an office rebuild and space for visitors, and eventually a new vat room, finished just in time for the great 2016 vintage. Finally, everything was complete.

Or so she thought.

2017: The turning point

At the end of April in 2017, a severe frost wiped out Corbin’s crop. Cruse-Bardinet says she felt like she was as dead as the vineyard. But gradually she saw the year with no wine as an opportunity to rethink everything she had been doing.

‘We will never fight against mother nature,’ she says. ‘Adapting to what she gives means changing the way we make wine.’

In other words, a style revolution.

The first thing was to recognise you couldn’t just follow traditional production rules. In 2018, she brought in a new cellar master, and started picking earlier, plot by plot.

‘Even a day can make all the difference,’ she says. Using plot by plot vinification, she favoured infusion rather than pump overs for less extraction.

Having sold the barrels intended for the 2017 vintage, she bought fewer, using only 50% new and discovered the richness of her wine in those not aged in new oak.

In 2019, she tried glass wine globes, a round-shaped glass vessel, for ageing the Cabernet Franc to showcase the Corbin terroir and bring out more pure fruit flavours.

In 2020, she started fermenting without sulfur and expanded wine globe experiments. In 2021, she added densimetric sorting, a way to move grapes through water and select only those with greater density. In the vineyard she switched to only organic products.

And she enlisted a new consultant, rising star Thomas Duclos of Oenoteam, noted for helping châteaux find a fresher, more balanced, nuanced wine style.

‘I’m on the way of Corbin and its terroir now,’ she says. ‘Finally, the wine and estate are what I want. And now my aim is to transmit all this to the future.’

Ten vintages of Château Corbin

Wines are listed by vintage, oldest to youngest

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Georgie Hindle, Arthur Coggill and Tom King tasted 147 wines, with 3 Exceptional, 32 Outstanding and 98 Highly recommended.

147 wines tasted

Exceptional 3

Outstanding 32

Highly recommended 98

Recommended 14

Commended 0

Fair 0

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their grand vin Pomerol and St-Emilion Grand Cru, Grand Cru Classé or 1er Grand Cru Classé wines from the 2020 vintage

'There wasn’t a wine I didn’t like,’ remarked Tom King after what proved to be one of Decanter’s most successful panel tastings in recent memory, with an extraordinary 35 wines rated Outstanding or above from 147 tasted – clear evidence of the strength and consistency of the 2020 vintage in St-Emilion and Pomerol.

The two-day blind tasting confirmed the quality across the board. Arthur Coggill summed it up neatly: ‘2020 is a homogeneously good vintage in Bordeaux – these are wines you can go and buy with confidence.’

The judges found no outright failures; ‘We didn’t actually find a bad wine,’ he added.

The growing season in 2020 was defined by an unusually early start, extreme heatwaves and the driest summer since 1959 (until the 2022 vintage).

Merlot, the dominant variety on the Right Bank, ripened beautifully under these conditions, yet the wines showed surprising restraint.

Alcohol levels and oak influence were far more moderate than the judges had feared; there were no overworked wines, instead freshness and balance prevailed. Differences between the appellations stood out clearly.

Pomerol offered greater consistency, especially at the lower end, producing plush and fleshy wines that remained faithful to their charming, fruit-forward signature.

‘Pomerol is just a bit more generous,’ observed Coggill. St-Emilion was more diverse and patchy at the entry level, with ‘more mediocre, but not necessarily bad wines’, Coggill noted – largely a reflection of its greater size and varied terroirs.

Yet at the top end, its wines frequently displayed superior elegance and finesse, outperforming Pomerol in poise and length.

St-Emilion Grand Cru Classé estates performed strongly, as expected, but Pomerol’s broader success across all price tiers was particularly striking.

Ready to go

The drinkability of these wines is a major strength. Many are already highly approachable – ‘happy wines’, as King put it, that will perform well by the glass in restaurants or on the table at home today.

The judges agreed that roughly half the wines felt ready to drink now, while the remainder offer excellent cellaring potential thanks to bright acidity, concentrated fruit and structured tannins.

King highlighted the ‘velvety’ texture of the Pomerols and their surprising accessibility: ‘There was not much in Pomerol at least that I would say has to be kept.’

Prices reflect the fine-wine status of these appellations; very few of the top-scoring bottles sit comfortably under £30, even in bond (before duty and VAT), indeed the very best top £50.

Yet within this category many represent excellent value, offering the immediate pleasure of a great vintage alongside the structure to evolve magnificently over the next 20-30 years.

Overall, the judges described 2020 as a ‘cracking vintage’ of good-to-excellent wines that offer a combination of generosity and restraint.

For drinkers seeking reliable, characterful Right Bank Bordeaux that can be enjoyed young or cellared with confidence, 2020 delivers in spades.

See all the notes and scores from the St-Emilion and Pomerol 2020 tasting here

The judges

St-Emilion & Pomerol 2020 tasting results

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Overshadowed by the first and second growths, the Médoc’s third growth estates are quietly undergoing one of Bordeaux’s most compelling qualitative evolutions – often delivering second growth-level quality but at more approachable prices.

Ironically, the catalyst may be the very classification that’s considered by many as obsolete.

With two notable exceptions, the third growths occupy an uneasy position within the Médoc hierarchy, neither rivalling the established aristocracy of the firsts or ‘super seconds’ (those second growths widely considered now to be performing at potentially first growth standard), nor having their status challenged by any glaringly insurgent success stories emerging from the fifth growths, whose own stars regularly defy official ranking.

Fifths such as Châteaux Pontet-Canet and Lynch-Bages now regularly command secondgrowth pricing, for example.

The 1855 Classification, in other words, has long ceased to function as an immutable ladder of quality.

Instead, the third growths exist in a zone defined less by hierarchy and more by expectation: dependable, historically respected, yet less often thrilling.

But a recent comparative tasting shows how that perception is changing.

Natural progression

For this article, the Maison Héritage restaurant in Sessenheim, Alsace (formerly known as Auberge au Boeuf, holder of a Michelin star from 2015 until early 2026) hosted a horizontal tasting of all 14 Médoc third growths from the 2020 vintage.

Unsurprisingly, Châteaux Palmer and Calon Ségur emerged as clearly the leading wines. More revealing was how the remaining 12 compared.

Pricing data from Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, show that, aside from Palmer and the rapidly ascending Calon Ségur, these estates have traded within a significantly lower band of pricing for roughly a quarter of a century.

Qualitatively, however, divergence has become increasingly apparent. As you can read in the tasting notes, each wine was paired with an older reference vintage, to gauge not only stylistic identity but tangible progress.

Improvements in viticulture, investment in wineries and increasingly precise winemaking have begun to reshape the third growth category from within.

Hive of activity

The framework defining these estates remains frozen in time. Conceived for Napoleon III’s Exposition Universelle de 1855 in Paris, the Classification still governs perception despite more than 170 years of transformation.

Of the 14 third growths, 13 continue to display their classified status prominently on labels, serving as both historical credential and commercial shorthand.

Only Château Palmer declines to display the distinction.

The irony is in the history. Charles Palmer was still assembling vineyards in Cantenac shortly before the 1855 Classification was finalised, meaning the estate that today rivals Bordeaux’s elite had not yet fully taken shape when the rankings were fixed.

Palmer’s third growth status reflects timing rather than intrinsic quality – a discrepancy long since corrected by the market.

Leaps and bounds

If the Classification no longer accurately describes a hierarchy, it continues nonetheless to shape behaviour.

Over the past two decades, that influence has produced something unexpected: competition within the Classification itself.

Across the Médoc region, vineyard restructuring, sustainability initiatives and increasingly refined cellar practices have collectively raised standards.

In St-Julien, Château Lagrange illustrates how long-term investment can quietly bolster stature.

A complete cellar modernisation completed in 2010 nearly doubled fermentation capacity, enabling precise parcel-by-parcel vinification.

Château Langoa Barton, long overshadowed by second growth Léoville Barton, has refined its approach steadily over the past 15 years through careful replanting and increasingly precise gravity-fed vinification, improving tannin quality while preserving its own style of St-Julien restraint.

Château La Lagune, the only Haut-Médoc appellation wine among the third growths, reflects the long-term influence of Caroline Frey, whose tenure from 2004 to 2025 (now managed by sister Delphine Frey) saw conversion to certified biodynamic winemaking alongside the introduction of massal selection (by taking cuttings from existing estate vine stocks) starting in 2008, strengthening vineyard identity and resilience.

Rising tide of quality

Including Palmer, 10 of the 14 third growths come from the Margaux appellation, some better known than others.

Château Ferrière, which impressed many tasting participants (some of whom had never heard of it) continues to pursue certified biodynamic viticulture following cellar renovations in 2013 that have enhanced precision and transparency in winemaking.

Better-known Château Giscours has sustained technical stewardship and, especially since the beginning of this century, it has transformed former inconsistency into one of Margaux’s most compelling contemporary expressions, combining aromatic finesse with structural confidence.

Château Cantenac Brown has entered a new phase of refinement, with 9.5ha of newly acquired vineyard parcels in 2020, additions that contribute greater depth and compositional precision, as well as the installation of completely new cellars, inaugurated in April 2024 (first vintage 2023).

Château d’Issan, known for its parcel-by-parcel winemaking and one of the most appreciated wines in the tasting, also acquired vineyard parcels in 2020, bordering Château Margaux, adding Malbec and Petit Verdot as blending options since that vintage.

At Château Kirwan, a decisive stylistic shift endures, following the arrival of general manager Philippe Delfaut in 2007.

Moving away from later harvesting and heavy oak influence, the estate adopted softer extractions and a more classical expression, consolidated by new cellars opened in 2017 enabling parcel-by-parcel vinification.

Château Malescot St-Exupéry retains a richer, more modern Margaux expression shaped with late consultant Michel Rolland, although the wood regime here seems to evolve toward greater balance, with new oak usage reduced in recent vintages.

Château Marquis d’Alesme shows renewal through both technical and experiential investment.

Cellar renovations completed in 2015 improved vinification precision, while increased Cabernet Sauvignon plantings and the creation of Le Hameau, a tucked-away space for food accompanied by the estate’s wines, have positioned Marquis d’Alesme as an innovator in wine tourism within Margaux.

Unequal progress

Not all estates have advanced equally.

Aside from increasing percentages of Petit Verdot in recent blends, Château Boyd-Cantenac remains austere, while Château Desmirail, another less well-known estate, appears only recently to be translating technical evolution into qualitative momentum.

The inclusion of Petit Verdot from mature vines, advances in pragmatic ecological vineyard management and the addition of truncated wooden vats have allowed more refined maceration and improved structural polish.

Such disparities underline a central paradox: the Classification groups estates together, while modern viticulture increasingly separates them.

Above this transforming field stands Château Palmer, not a static exception but rather a moving benchmark.

Under director Thomas Duroux, biodynamic viticulture, rigorous parcel selection and tasting-led extraction have progressively refined texture and transparency, allowing the estate to redefine excellence within this Classification rank.

Château Calon Ségur represents a different, still unfolding ascent.

Extensive replanting since the mid-2000s has left the vineyard unusually young, yet increases in both vine density and the proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon in the vineyard promise further gains in structure and precision.

Recent vintages, including the 2020, already perform convincingly up against second growth-level wines.

Inspiring to improve

Which brings us inevitably to the enduring question: is the 1855 Classification obsolete?

Undeniably so, if judged as a hierarchy intended to reflect today’s realities. Yet its continued existence has produced a fascinating irony.

Unable to change their historical rank, estates have instead worked to be deserving of it.

Many of the third growths, positioned at the centre of Bordeaux’s most famous classification, consequently now count among the Médoc’s most dynamic properties.

The 1855 Classification may no longer precisely determine quality, but the desire not to fall short of its rankings continues to drive producers’ ambition.

In Bordeaux, history rarely disappears. Sometimes, inconveniently yet effectively, it contrives to keep everyone on their toes.

Médoc third growths: The Panos Kakaviatos (PK) revised ranking

If the 1855 Médoc Classification of grand cru classé estates were revised today, the following are my hypothetical rankings, based on current quality, market perception and qualitative evolution of each estate – listed in their proposed ‘new’ order, and alphabetically within that.

Tasting notes and pricing shown here (average price before tax as shown on wine-searcher.com on 12 April 2026) use the 2020 vintage as a benchmark; pricing among the Médoc third growths reveals how the existing 1855 hierarchy can still dictate market positioning, albeit not always in step with relative quality.

Châteaux Palmer and Calon Ségur are both priced in clear recognition of top performance in 2020.

Then there is the cluster of 12 other current third growths, though not all are equal in quality – in reinterpreting the rankings today, I would create a category similar to the ‘super seconds’, or in this case the ‘thrilling thirds’.

This is to reflect the reality that estates such as Cantenac Brown, d’Issan, Giscours, Lagrange and Langoa Barton are delivering relatively higher quality than the others, at prices that have not yet fully caught up.

By contrast, wines such as Château Desmirail and Boyd-Cantenac appear less compelling in value terms, relative to their peers.

The 1855 Classification appears on all their labels, other than Palmer, but the degree to which the Classification still anchors price, regardless of progress in viticulture and winemaking, creates striking disparities in value within the category.

Château Palmer

Margaux

PK revised ranking: First growth

Directed by Thomas Duroux, Palmer cultivates 66ha under certified biodynamic management, combining meticulous parcel stewardship with advanced research into climate resilience and vineyard adaptation.

Technical expertise underpins precise extraction and ageing, with wines maturing 20-22 months in 50%-70% new oak.

The inauguration of the estate’s Village complex in 2025, including staff facilities and a restaurant, reflects Palmer’s commitment to collective identity, sustainability and long-term cultural as well as technical leadership.

Average bottle price: £243*

Château Calon Ségur

St-Estèphe

PK revised ranking: Second growth

Directed by Vincent Millet, Calon Ségur cultivates a largely unchanged 55ha vineyard representing one of the Médoc’s rare historical continuities.

Cabernet Sauvignon accounts for roughly 57% of plantings here, with restructuring underway to increase its proportion. Ageing extends 18-20 months in new oak.

Average bottle price: £88*

Château Cantenac Brown

Margaux

PK revised ranking: Thrilling third

Under director José Sanfins, this 75ha estate is planted largely to Cabernet Sauvignon.

Since new ownership in 2019, vineyard acquisitions together with major investment – notably an eco-designed gravity winery first used for the 2023 vintage – have strengthened precision and estate coherence.

Wines mature for 16-18 months in about 60% new oak.

Average bottle price: £42*

Château d’Issan

Margaux

PK revised ranking: Thrilling third

Jointly owned by Jacky Lorenzetti and Emmanuel Cruse, d’Issan cultivates 55ha under technical director Eric Pellon.

Careful parcel-by-parcel selection and vinification, reinforced by recent vineyard acquisitions, enhance precision and integration across the estate.

Wines age for about 18 months in 50% new oak.

Average bottle price: £45*

Château Giscours

Margaux

PK revised ranking: Thrilling third

Led by general manager Alexander van Beek, Giscours cultivates 100ha planted predominantly to Cabernet Sauvignon.

Continued refinement in both vineyard and cellar has reinforced consistency and precision across vintages.

Ageing lasts up to 21 months in around 50% new oak.

Average bottle price: £47*

Château Lagrange

St-Julien

PK revised ranking: Thrilling third

Directed by Matthieu Bordes, Lagrange cultivates an unusually continuous 118ha estate dating back to 1855.

A major cellar expansion completed in 2010, which effectively doubled vat capacity, allows extensive parcel-by-parcel vinification and enhanced precision.

Wines age up to 21 months in roughly 50% new oak.

Average bottle price: £38*

Château Langoa Barton

St-Julien

PK revised ranking: Thrilling third

Managed by Damien Barton Sartorius, Langoa Barton cultivates 20ha reflecting a classical St-Julien balance rooted in long family stewardship.

Recent investment has improved parcel precision while preserving traditional proportions.

Wines are aged about 18 months in 60% new oak.

Average bottle price: £36*

Château Ferrière

Margaux

PK revised ranking: No change

Owned and directed by Claire Villars-Lurton, Ferrière cultivates 24ha under certified organic and biodynamic management.

Old massal-selection vines contribute finesse and aromatic precision, reflecting a philosophy centred on terroir expression.

Wines age 16-18 months in roughly 40% new oak.

Average bottle price: £33*

Château Kirwan

Margaux

PK revised ranking: No change

Directed by Philippe Delfaut, Kirwan cultivates 37ha with an emphasis on gentler extraction and greater terroir clarity following stylistic evolution initiated in the late 2000s.

Modern cellars enable detailed parcel by parcel vinification, with ageing lasting 18-21 months in about 50% new oak.

Average bottle price: £40*

Château La Lagune

Haut-Médoc

PK revised ranking: No change

Long guided by Caroline Frey and now managed by her sister Delphine Frey, La Lagune cultivates approximately 80ha planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot.

Biodynamic certification achieved in 2021 reflects sustained attention to vineyard vitality.

Wines age 16-18 months in around 50% new oak.

Average bottle price: £34*

Château Malescot St-Exupéry

Margaux

PK revised ranking: No change

Owned by Jean-Luc Zuger and guided for almost three decades by the recently late consultant Michel Rolland, this 28ha estate cultivates Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot alongside smaller proportions of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

A gradual reduction in new oak seeks greater freshness within the estate’s historically opulent style.

Ageing lasts 16-18 months.

Average bottle price: £39*

Château Marquis d’Alesme

Margaux

PK revised ranking: No change

Acquired by Hubert Perrodo in 2006 and subsequently developed under the leadership of his daughter Nathalie Perrodo, this 14ha estate has undergone extensive renovation since 2015, improving vineyard precision and balance.

Wines age 16-18 months in about 50% new oak.

Average bottle price: £36*

Château Desmirail

Margaux

PK revised ranking: Fourth growth

Now directed by Thierry Lurton, Desmirail cultivates 35ha combining Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with increasing Petit Verdot influence.

Expanded vineyard holdings and updated cellar facilities allow more detailed parcel vinification.

Wines age 16-18 months in about 50% new oak.

Average bottle price: £31*

Château Boyd-Cantenac

Margaux

PK revised ranking: Fifth growth

Owned by Lucien Guillemet, this 17ha Margaux estate cultivates predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon alongside Merlot, Cabernet Franc and increasing Petit Verdot proportions intended to reinforce structure and freshness.

Wines are aged 15-18 months in 80%-90% new oak.

Average bottle price: £36*

Third Growth wines

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As so often happens in Bordeaux, great vintages come in pairs.

Just a year on from appraising the finest wines of 2015, we are now examining the very best of 2016.

In similar fashion to 2009/2010, 1995/1996, 1989/1990, 1985/1986 and, although separated by an abysmal vintage, the otherworldly 1959/1961, so often these legendary pairs are qualitative peers but stylistically polar. That is also true with 2015 and 2016.

While the rhetoric of my equivalent article in last year’s Bordeaux guide was based on the famous ‘rule of fives’ (years ending in ‘5’ are reputed always to produce good quality in Bordeaux), 2016 has been proposed by many as ‘the greatest global wine vintage ever’.

We are certainly not here to examine that claim, but we are here to surmise where it might sit among the pantheon of the finest vintages ever produced in Bordeaux.

The growing season

The 2016 vintage was marked by a particularly long hang time (relatively slow, extended ripening season) that led to much better phenolic ripeness of flavour compounds and tannins in the grape skins, seeds and stems.

Although the winter had been cold and wet, the summer was hot and dry, and critically it had a much higher average number of sunshine hours, but without the mercury tipping off the scale.

September saw rain arrive at the optimum moment, before an Indian summer, allowing the grapes to mature both slowly and fully.

At some châteaux, harvest didn’t begin until October – a real rarity these days – and this was crucial to the harvest’s success.

Market performance

Although the 2016 en primeur campaign (in spring 2017) was an incredibly successful one for most UK merchants, the price performance has been modest since.

Merchant Bordeaux Index reports that what could broadly be considered the ‘top 20 wines of the vintage’ have increased, on average, just 1% (excluding storage) against a broad selection of (non-vinous) commodities that have seen growth of closer to 50% in that period.

There are exceptions, though, of course.

Up to late-March 2026 (according to Bordeaux Index’s LiveTrade platform), Château Les Carmes Haut-Brion is the best price performer, at 72% up from its primeurs release.

In terms of ‘super seconds’ (top-rated wines among the second growth to fifth growth estates), châteaux Pichon Comtesse, Montrose and Beychevelle have seen rises of 48%, 38% and 24% respectively.

At the other end of the scale, with Châteaux Pavie and La Mission Haut-Brion being the biggest fallers once again, we are no closer to addressing the question we posed last year: ‘Does an estate’s classification affect the price?’

In the case of relatively newly promoted Pavie, these continued price falls suggest the market is unwilling to pay its ambitious release prices.

Conversely, a fall in the price of Château La Mission Haut-Brion – trading at almost half the price of neighbouring Pessac-Léognan first growth Château Haut-Brion – would appear to indicate that the 1855 classification is more relevant than ever, despite the two now being very much qualitative peers.

Standout appellations

While this could be a relatively futile exercise in this tasting, if I were forced to pick just two communes that performed particularly well in 2016, I would suggest Pomerol and Margaux.

St-Estèphe would run a close third; however, the former two showed not necessarily the very apex of the tasting, but a higher median quality than in other vintages, with some wonderful surprises further down the classification ranking.

See more of Gareth Birchley's revised notes and recommendations from Bordeaux's 2016 vintage

Testing impressions

So, what do the wines taste like today?

Unlike its predecessor, there is far less opulence in these wines. They are, generally speaking, linear, precise, occasionally backward in terms of their development, but impeccably balanced.

Across the board the tannins are fine and beginning to integrate perfectly, leaving silky, pure wines that will be incredibly long lived.

I would suggest that, at 10 years old, there are only a handful that are beginning to show signs of marked evolution and therefore ‘drinkability’ for those seeking claret with full maturity.

The best examples will evolve at a glacial place and, dare I say it, under perfect storage conditions, still provide pleasure close to their 100th birthday.

I say that not based upon huge tannin structure that needs to be resolved over decades, but due to the wines’ sublime balance, which will mean, for the most part, 2016 will drink well every day of its life.

Birchley’s pick: 25 Bordeaux 2016s, 10 years on

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The 2025 en primeur campaign appears to have got off to a somewhat haphazard start with a spattering of big name releases but little rhythm thanks to a succession of bank holiday weekends and now a week-long lull.

Nonetheless, some key wines have appeared so far, including Lafleur (newly rebadged as Vin de France), Château Cheval Blanc, Château Pontet-Canet and Château Cos d’Estournel.

More recent releases have included Château Lafite Rothschild and its stable, Château Angélus and Château Palmer, as well as châteaux Branaire-Ducru, Lynch-Bages, Lascombes and Léoville-Barton among others.

First of the firsts

The most notable release of all so far has been first growth, Lafite Rothschild. The wine was rated 97-points by Decanter’s Georgie Hindle, who said it was: ‘A bit more lively, energetic and upfront than Lafite can sometimes be.’

With consistently high scores from other major critics too, there was hope that Lafite – as has been the case in the past – could help keep the campaign on course and set an example with its pricing.

Yields were very small in 2025 (27hl/ha) and quantities are very limited. Berry Bros & Rudd is offering the wine in packs of three for £1,047 (£4,164 per 12x75).

The 2025 is around 16% more expensive than the 2024, but for a much higher quality wine and one that is still much cheaper than many older vintages of Lafite – especially other highly-rated vintages.

Second wine Carruades de Lafite was also released at £432 per three bottles.

A smile on the face of angels

Right Bank grand cru Angélus hit the market on 21 May. Another wine with 97-points from Hindle who wrote: ‘The energy and balance is flawless. Really an elegant, elongated wine with such nuance of flavour. I love this and think they've done a super job – juicy, this brings a smile to your face.’

The wine is being offered for £606 per three bottles or £1,200 per six at BBR. Fine wine marketplace Liv-ex noted that the 2025 was one of the more expensive vintages available and some recent older vintages with equal or higher scores are currently available for less.

And finally, Palmer, which was released on 22 May and is being offered by BBR and other merchants for £1,158 per six bottles (or £585 per three).

Likewise scored 97-points by Hindle – who called it, ‘sturdy, stately, complex’ and ‘compelling’ – it was again noted by Liv-ex as being one at the more expensive end of comparable recent vintages.

Slow and steady

Reaction to many wines has been broadly positive so far. Big hitters such as Cheval Blanc and Lafite have sold well, several merchants said.

Corney & Barrow noted that its exclusives from the Moueix and Mitjaville stables had also found a ready audience.

Speaking to Decanter, one merchant said pricing was ‘sensible’ but also ‘not necessarily at a level where the wine becomes a must buy’.

Nonetheless, they added, buyers recognised ‘this is truly a vintage of excellent quality and a future great’.

This was leading to ‘reasonable’ levels of interest and, ‘significantly more large format bottling requests than normal given this is a vintage where buyers will want to own and drink’.

June offensive

Many of the Bordelais are currently in Asia at the Vinexpo trade show, hence the quiet end to May.

Various insiders, however, have caught wind of a number of big name releases that are lined up for early June.

A select few can be seen below.

Early June releases

1st June: Giscours

2nd June: Pichon Lalande, La Mission Haut-Brion, Lagrange, Pavie

3rd June: Mouton Rothschild, Haut-Bailly, Brane Cantenac

4th June: Cantenac Brown

8th June: Clos Fourtet

9th June: Haut-Brion

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Andy Howard MW, Beatrice Bessi and Robert Mathias tasted 137 wines, with 16 Highly recommended and 80 Recommended

Right Bank Bordeaux: Panel tasting scores

137 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 0

Highly recommended 16

Recommended 80

Commended 41

Fair 0

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their current-release red grand vin from Lussac St-Emilion, Puisseguin St-Emilion, Montagne St-Emilion, St-Georges St-Emilion, Lalande-de-Pomerol, Fronsac, Canon-Fronsac, Côtes de Bourg, Blaye, Blaye Côtes de Bordeaux, Francs Côtes de Bordeaux, Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux or Côtes de Bordeaux (APs St-Emilion and Pomerol were not included)

A patchwork quilt of value wines

Although no wines were rated Outstanding (95 points and above), there was still much to enjoy in this tasting.

A wide range of appellations were tasted, generating 16 Highly recommended wines (90-94pts) from eight different appellationss.

APs ranged from those on the opposite side of the Gironde to the Haut-Médoc (Côtes de Bourg, Blaye Côtes de Bordeaux); Fronsac and Lalande-de-Pomerol (west and north of Libourne); the St-Emilion ‘satellites’ of Lussac, Puisseguin, Montagne and St-Georges; plus the Castillon, Francs and Sainte Foy Côtes de Bordeaux appellations further east.

The ‘satellite’ APs performed strongly, accounting for 10 of the 16 Highly recommendeds.

Bordeaux continues to offer a unique package for wine drinkers, combining (at the less-exalted level) attractive pricing, capacity to both drink well in youth and age, and a fresh, medium-alcohol style in tune with current trends.

Many of these qualities were on show in these wines.

2023 finds favour

Robert Mathias MW saw plenty of positives: ‘There was a lot of approachability in the recent vintages, and charm in many of the wines. The satellite APs are a good hunting ground for early-drinking, easygoing reds.’

Beatrice Bessi felt there were ‘very pleasant discoveries in Blaye, Castillon, Lussac, Puisseguin and Montagne’.

Merlot (unsurprisingly) dominated the blends in these Right Bank wines and was generally handled well, with subtle, restrained oak (when used).

Château Coucy’s Origines (Montagne) also stood out as a single-varietal Cabernet Franc aged for 11-12 months in amphora.

Considering vintages, Bessi was most impressed by the 2023s, while Mathias noted that in 2022 there were some wines ‘where you saw younger vines and poorer terroirs resulting in some vines being blocked due to the drought’.

However, Mathias concluded: ‘The best wines stood out for their freshness, completeness and energy. While they didn’t reach the heights of more famous APs, they’re still to be commended.'

See all notes and scores from the Right Bank Bordeaux tasting

The judges

Right Bank Bordeaux panel tasting results:

Wines were tasted blind

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The Ca’Marcanda project in the sea-kissed region of coastal Tuscany began in 1996, led by the pioneering vision of Angelo Gaja.

It was a decision fuelled by curiosity – his daughter Gaia coyly jokes that her father could be accused of ‘cheating on Nebbiolo with Cabernet’.

Yet, what Bolgheri really represented was a great sense of freedom.

‘Stylistically there were no preconceptions; it’s the new world of Italy,’ she notes.

The Gaja name is perhaps best known as a leading light in Piedmont under Angelo Gaja, but today the family’s estates span three regions of Italy: Piedmont (Barbaresco, Barolo and Alta Langa), Tuscany (Ca’Marcanda in Bolgheri and Pieve Santa Restituta in Montalcino) and Sicily (Idda on Etna).

Settling in Bolgheri

As Gaia explains, ‘We arrived 10 years later’ – namely after the key names that led the historic Super Tuscan movement of the 1980s, from Grattamacco to Guado al Tasso and Ornellaia.

While Angelo Gaja remains involved in key viticultural decisions, since 2012 it has been the three siblings of the family’s fifth generation that tasted and decided each week with the winemaker.

‘Here I grew a lot thanks to the experiments at Ca’Marcanda… It is a philosophy of doing, of being hands-on,’ says Gaia.

The flagship: Camarcanda

Gaja’s 120ha Ca'Marcanda estate focuses on four key labels: three reds (Promis, Magari and Camarcanda) and a white blend, Vistamare.

For the reds, key international varieties take centre stage, namely Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Syrah, in addition to Sangiovese.

The distinct Bolgheri landscape offers a range of soil types, from more sandy to clay-driven and mineral-rich.

This is in particular due to the influence of the Metalliferous Hills, which in the past was a key area for copper, iron, marble and limestone mines.

Recent zoning studies have evidenced around 27 different soil types; to which Gaia acknowledged, ‘the future of Bolgheri will still have a lot of surprises for us’.

Flagship wine Camarcanda represents the estate’s true calling card, produced from some of its best plots.

Today it is a Cabernet Sauvignon-driven blend with the remainder Cabernet Franc, while in the past Merlot also featured.

‘Italianity’ as a marker of identity

Gaia Gaja certainly knows how to command a room. Pulling listeners into her inner circle, she highlights the concept of ‘Italianity’ and the triumph of the ‘ingredient’ or ‘raw material’ in winemaking and gastronomic excellence in Italy.

For her, it's a sense that ‘complexity is not the same as complicated’ that is key, and what truly matters is purity of fruit and territory.

Looking ahead

The effects of climate change on winemaking were already front of mind in Angelo’s choices.

Forward-thinking and ambitious, from the outset he collaborated with university professors, entomologists, botanists and geologists.

Today, Ca’Marcanda remains a forerunner in its approach to the developments and adaptations required by the changing climate in both vineyard and winery.

Working with Professor Andrea Lucchi from the University of Pisa, the estate was involved in an extensive study of insect behaviour that culminated in the pioneering development of ‘smart bugs’, which are being trialled and used to tackle pests in the vineyard, beginning with Ca’Marcanda and now stretching to some 120 other producers.

A focus on the role of mixed agriculture (olives, cereals, woodland), composting practices, and cover crops (such as mustard, vetch and clover) are further strategies employed to encourage biodiversity and healthy soils.

More vigorous rootstocks are being chosen, along with a shift from cordon training to Guyot – in part to tackle vineyard diseases such as esca.

Planting orientations in the vineyard are changing too, with newer vines planted north to south rather than east to west in order to maximise freshness.

In the cellar, blending possibilities are being harnessed to make the most of difficult vintages.

Despite the unpredictability of an ever-changing climate, for Gaia these difficulties also constitute an exciting challenge.

She notes that it is these adverse vintages that provide the opportunity to showcase ‘excellence in consistency’, drawing on decades of experience and the ‘repetition of a craft that goes into the glass’.

The evolution of Ca'Marcanda in six wines

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In the heart of Pauillac, where iconic Bordeaux estates often dominate headlines with soaring prices and strong marketing, Château Batailley stands as a quiet counterpoint.

This fifth growth property, as ranked in the 1855 classification, delivers consistent quality at prices that remain accessible, making it a beacon for value in a region frequently criticised for rising prices.

Owned by the Castéja family since 1961, Batailley forms part of its broader Borie-Manoux group, which spans Left and Right Bank properties alongside a sizeable négociant business.

Yet the estate shuns the spotlight – no flashy tasting rooms, tourist facilities or polished press releases; instead just a commitment to quality, rooted in decades of experience and knowhow.

As Frédéric Castéja, who oversees broad business operations alongside his father Philippe, puts it: ‘We don’t shout, we’re not flashy. That’s not our style.’

Instead it’s the wines that speak, through their structure, longevity and reliability – even in challenging vintages.

This humility, combined with family control over distribution through the négociant business, ensures Batailley offers real value both for consumer and investor: wines with long drinking windows and en primeur releases that will generally appreciate modestly and reliably over time, rewarding buyers without great speculation.

Spanning 63ha mostly on the flat Pauillac plateau – ‘tractors can do 1km without turning,’ Frédéric points out – the vineyards are planted on deep, ancient Günz gravel soils blended with silica and sand.

Impressive ageing potential

This landscape helps to imbue the wines with firm structures and impressive ageing potential.

Plantings follow classic proportions for the Pauillac region: 70%-80% Cabernet Sauvignon and much of the rest Merlot, with smaller amounts of Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc (1%-4% in all).

‘We’ve always had four grape varieties,’ Frédéric explains, noting that the varieties help to build the second wine – Lions de Batailley, sourced from the younger vines of the vineyard – which means an estate signature is retained without diluting quality.

Yields average 45-50hl/ha, with recent lows in challenging years around 30hl/ha due to adverse weather.

Viticulture at Batailley is meticulous yet pragmatic. Replanting targets parcels more than 50 years old, allowing for fallow periods of three to four years.

No herbicides are used, and working methods combine modern practicality and biodynamic influences – treatments have followed moon cycles since 2005 on the Right Bank and since 2010 on the Left Bank.

Five hectares – half of a plot shared with neighbouring sister property Château Lynch-Moussas – have been under organic trial since 2016, informed by the family’s fully certified organic 75ha Provence estate Château Bas (acquired in 2020), which produces reds, rosés and whites – but there are no plans for certification here in Pauillac.

‘We need to be careful in Bordeaux – it’s not the best appellation for organics, because of the climate conditions,’ Castéja cautions, underscoring a philosophy that marries respect for nature with realism.

Biodiversity benefits enormously, however, from the 200ha or more of forests surrounding Lynch-Moussas – one of the largest wooded buffers in Pauillac and nearby St-Julien.

Lengthy tradition

The Batailley estate ranks among the Médoc’s oldest, with vines cultivated since the 17th century on land named after the 1453 Battle of Castillon, a decisive clash in the Hundred Years’ War in which French forces finally wrested control of Gascony from the English.

Documented ownership begins in the 18th century with the Saint-Martin family of Pauillac, then in 1791 shares passed to merchant Guillaume Pécholier.

A transformative phase arrived in 1816 when Daniel Guestier bought it, expanding vineyards, upgrading facilities and boosting quality, ultimately earning classification status in the 1855 official ranking.

Subsequent owners included Guestier’s son (1847) and banker Constant Halphen (1866). The Borie era started in 1924, with the purchase by brothers Marcel and Francis, which led to the 1941 division into two separate properties, Château Batailley (Marcel) and Château Haut-Batailley (Francis).

Denise Borie and Emile Castéja took the reins in 1961, with Emile guiding things for four decades, embracing innovations such as early picking machines, though these were rarely used.

A heart attack in 2001 shifted control to Frédéric’s father Philippe, beginning ‘just in time for harvest picking’, Frédéric recalls.

Philippe, along with consultant at the time Denis Dubourdieu, prioritised meticulous vineyard mapping and planting before an expansion of the vat house in 2006 to 62 stainless steel vats (about one per hectare, spanning 50hl-200hl in capacity), which enabled plot-by-plot vinification.

‘It took them at least 10-12 years to understand the vineyard,’ Frédéric adds.

Winemaking is classic, slowly moving with the times to include cooler fermentations for greater fruit purity, but there are no radical processes here.

Growing the range

Technical director Didier Chadourne (since 2013), vineyard manager Olivier Gourdin (since 2022), and cellar master Hugues Mathieu (since 2023) collaborate with consultants Axel Marchal (recipient of the Decanter Rising Star award in 2021) and Valérie Lavigne.

Fermentation is at low temperatures: ‘Never above 28 degrees,’ Mathieu notes, down from 30°-31°C a decade ago, with the aim of attaining ‘more freshness and more fruit at the end’.

Early picking preserves quality, especially in the Merlot: ‘There’s a peak with this grape and then quality goes down – it’s easier to pick before that point than just after.’

Until 2014, the estate produced only a grand vin, but that year saw the inaugural vintage of a second wine, Lions de Batailley, and this was followed by a third wine, Pauillac de Batailley, in 2018.

Between them they have broadened consumer access, while ensuring the best fruit goes to preserve the quality of the flagship wine.

Production typically divides roughly two-thirds to the grand vin, with the remainder split between the second and third wines.

The grand vin sees the longest ageing in French oak – 16-18 months, with 55%-60% new barrels – imparting structure and complexity, suitable for long cellaring.

In contrast, Lions de Batailley and Pauillac de Batailley use significantly less new oak (typically 40%-45% for Lions, 20%-30% for the third wine) and shorter ageing, resulting in wines that are more approachable in their youth: softer, fruit-forward and ready to enjoy sooner, making them ideal for earlier drinking without sacrificing the estate’s signature character.

Value package

The grand vin’s style is distinctly its own: a beautiful underlying strength that captures classic Pauillac power – cassis, blackcurrant, minty freshness, graphite and soft cedar spice – yet tempered with a certain delicacy and finesse.

It is never overly heavy or extracted; instead, it offers silky tannins, vibrant fruit and a pronounced mineral backbone that leads to an unmistakable gravelly, flinty finish.

This balance – potent yet beguiling, structured yet graceful – makes Château Batailley particularly rewarding when given time in bottle, which allows the muscular frame to integrate and the elegance to shine through.

It excels also in so-called ‘off vintages’, when it still maintains precision, focus and above all drinkability.

The value that Batailley offers is informed by the négociant side of the family business.

Borie-Manoux handles 30 million bottles annually (1-1.3 million coming from the family-owned estates alone, involving three dedicated bottling lines), granting the company insight into the overall context of the market as a whole.

‘We control our distribution and our pricing direction, but also, as négociants selling neighbours’ wines, inflation is restrained,’ says Frédéric.

‘If we raise our price, we can’t tell other people to be reasonable with their prices.’ When someone buys Batailley en primeur (while the wines are still being aged in casks before bottling and release) ‘they know two or three years later the price will be higher naturally’, Frédéric says.

‘We want people to know they’ve done a good deal.’

Sizing up a legacy

Future plans at Batailley include a vat room refurbishment, though ‘only if it’s actually going to add value to the wine – there’s no point otherwise’, Frédéric says resolutely.

Heritage is preserved in tangible ways. The estate maintains an extraordinary library cellar with some 65,000 bottles stretching back to 1881 – the oldest vintage still held in quantity.

Whole racks are dedicated to legendary years such as 1961, 1949 and others – in large-format bottles, too – allowing the family or occasionally special clients to buy a birth-year bottle or a milestone vintage from well-preserved stock.

Few estates retain such an extensive collection in-house, a testament to meticulous storage and the family’s reverence for its history.

‘It’s a library for everybody, for my children and grandchildren,’ Frédéric says, capturing the intergenerational spirit.

Large formats play a special role in this legacy. The estate regularly takes orders for magnums, double magnums, imperials and even larger sizes up to 27L, catering to collectors and special occasions.

In 2024, to mark the centenary of Borie-Castéja ownership, the family reintroduced the MarieJeanne format at 2.25L (three 75cl bottles) – a historical Bordeaux vessel somewhat forgotten since the mid-20th century.

Frédéric describes it as offering ‘the best exchange between wine and oxygen’ – optimal for ageing and development.

Presented in elegant wooden cases with a commemorative red label (£131-£137 Justerini & Brooks, Mann Fine Wine, Uncorked), it has become a keeper format, available alongside traditional sizes (75cl, £35 Cru Wine, Fine Wine Direct, Mr Wheeler) and underscoring the estate’s blend of tradition and thoughtful innovation.

Enduring appeal

The Castéjas champion their own estates; Philippe, 77 (who was flying to Hong Kong at the time of our meeting and impressive vertical tasting), still travels relentlessly, while Frédéric logs three months yearly abroad.

But they also fly the flag for the region more broadly. ‘I hope I’m a good ambassador... we need to be good ambassadors for Bordeaux.’

With 17 children among the family’s eight shareholders (three of whom work in the wine business), continuity seems assured, though Frédéric emphasises choice: ‘There’s no pressure on the next generation; they must do what they want.’

In fact, he’d rather they worked elsewhere before joining the family business if they wish, as he did.

Château Batailley’s enduring appeal lies in this quiet confidence – deep roots, precise craft, unwavering value – proving that exceptional Pauillac can remain approachable and rewarding.

Pauillac paradigm: a taste of Château Batailley in 12 vintages

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Château Lafleur 2025 was offered by UK merchant Justerini & Brooks at around £1,800 per three bottles in bond (IB) on Friday 15 May.

Rated 97 points by Decanter’s Georgie Hindle, Lafleur 2025 represents the first vintage under the generic ‘Vin de France’ label.

Owner the Guinaudeau family announced last year that it was taking the producer out of the Pomerol and Bordeaux appellations, in order to have more flexibility to meet climate change-related challenges in the vineyards.

‘Bravo’ said Hindle of the Lafleur 2025 in-barrel. ‘A quietly compelling wine from Lafleur this year.’

Lafleur is highly sought-after and has a reputation for stable release pricing – even if vintages can subsequently soar on the secondary market.

At £1,800 per 3x75cl IB, the 2025 wine looks a shade more expensive than the 2024 vintage release (reported at £3,530 per 6x75cl IB).

Allocation only

Getting hold of it could be a challenge. Justerini & Brooks said, ‘Production is even smaller than usual in 2025, as such, everything is offered subject to our allocation process.’

However, other 2025-vintage releases from the Lafleur stable include Le Grand Village, also now a Vin de France and offered at £89 per 6x75cl IB.

‘I so often think of this as one of Bordeaux's best value wines and it's brilliant in 2025,’ said Decanter’s Hindle, rating the wine at 93pts.

Other releases included Lafleur second wine Les Pensées 2025 (95pts), offered at £400 (3x75cl IB).

A slow-burning early campaign but 'bargains' to be found...

More Bordeaux 2025 wines were released en primeur in the past week, including St-Emilion’s Cheval Blanc, as well as Duhart-Milon, Domaine de Chevalier and La Lagune.

Many big hitters kept their powder dry in the first fortnight of the campaign, though; perhaps gauging the mood.

While critical appraisal for Bordeaux 2025 points to a highly promising vintage maturing châteaux barrel cellars, the vintage arrives to an ongoing challenging wine market – following a period of falling fine wine prices – and macroeconomic uncertainty.

Prices have nudged upwards on several 2025 releases so far, yet some still compare favourably against en primeur pricing over the past decade.

Releases snapshot

UK merchant Farr Vintners offered Domaine de Chevalier 2025 red (94-95pts, Decanter) at £216 per 6x75cl in bond (IB), for example, adding, ‘slightly up on last year but apart from that, the lowest price here since the 2014’.

At current prices, however, some recent back-vintages were available for less, according to Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade.

Haut-Médoc third growth Château La Lagune 2025 (94pts) was €21 per bottle ex-négociant and £259 per 12 bottles (IB).

That's up slightly year-on-year but also lower than every other campaign since at least the 2008 vintage, showed Liv-ex data, noting the 2025 was also one of the less expensive recent La Lagune wines at current market prices.

Duhart-Milon 2025 debuted this week after receiving a 95-point rating from Hindle, who described the wine as 'brilliant' this vintage.

It was €48 per bottle ex-négociant, up slightly on 2024 and matching the 2019-vintage release price, and £588 per 12x75cl IB in the UK (Source: Liv-ex).

Corney & Barrow (C&B) said, 'We were very keen on the quality of Duhart in 2025 but sadly the lower market prices of older equivalent-quality vintages make it a pass, unless you are a die-hard Duhart enthusiast.'

The merchant highlighted several ‘bargains’ among early releases, including Margaux-appellation Château Angludet 2025 (94pts, Decanter) at £120 per 6x75cl IB.

‘Holding their price on the 2024 release, they are to be commended,’ it said.

Sales so far

It remains too early to properly assess sales in 2025, although there have been a few highlights.

Thomas Parker MW at Farr Vintners previously said the merchant sold a decent volume of Batailley, while Miles Davis, of Vinum Fine Wines, told Decanter that the group sold more Pontet-Canet 2025 than expected.

Will Hargrove, C&B's head of fine wine, said the merchant’s offers on Ets JP Moueix wines and Mitjavile (including Tertre Roteboeuf) were ‘going down well’ with customers.

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Sometimes, I forget how delicious Bordeaux is. Good Bordeaux, that is.

There’s an ocean of Bordeaux that will underwhelm you – but, when it’s good, it really is the best (just don’t tell the Burgundians).

Mouthwatering, fresh and utterly moreish, ageing with a grace I can only dream of: there’s a reason the wine trade makes such a fuss when the new vintage is unveiled.

While the 2025s are just starting their élevage (check out Georgie Hindle’s en primeur report on the anticipated vintage), there are plenty of vintages on the market that you should or could be drinking now – and not necessarily from the most lauded years.

The 2012 vintage was underrated on release, but its tricky conditions produced a host of wines that are elegant, balanced and aromatically enchanting.

Château Brane-Cantenac was a highlight in recent tastings – a wine that has old-school appeal and is singing now, while some, such as Château Cos d’Estournel, still feel youthful.

Similarly, the frost-bitten 2017s are charming and juicy – tuck into them and enjoy.

Pleasant surprises and promises

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the openness of some 2015s – such as Château Giscours or Château Clerc Milon.

It’s a vintage I associate with muscle and power, and wines that often seem to have frozen in their evolution.

Château Montrose, however, bucks the trend, as well as its own reputation for austerity (shaken off in more recent vintages): it’s a wine I'd love to have in my cellar.

The 2019 vintage is deserving of its reputation, and it’s amazing how approachable some wines from that year already are – don’t be scared to test the waters if you were wise enough to stock up.

Lastly, it’s a reminder I myself need: don’t forget about white Bordeaux.

Ageworthy, textured, utterly delicious and still often brilliant value – it’s something I’m vowing to drink more of.

Bordeaux wines

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Authentic Bordeaux travel: See the region through a local's eyes with our new expert guide

Bordeaux is often portrayed through its most famous names: classified growths, grand châteaux and bottles that command eye-watering prices.

But that image tells only part of the story. Beyond the prestige labels lies a living city where wine is part of daily routine rather than ceremony – poured in neighbourhood bars, opened at the market and shared over lunch without formality.

This article focuses on that more approachable side of Bordeaux. The places where you can taste excellent wines without spending a fortune, eat well in unpretentious settings, stay in characterful accommodation and experience the region in a way that feels grounded in everyday life.

From vineyard picnics and creative châteaux visits to lively markets, good-value restaurants and distinctive places to stay, here is where to find an authentic Bordeaux experience.

At the Châteaux

Let’s start with Bordeaux’s main attraction: the wineries.

While the region is often associated with prestigious labels, classified growths and grand architecture, the everyday reality of wine tourism in Bordeaux is far more accessible.

Across the region, a wide network of family-run estates and historic châteaux welcome visitors with relaxed, informative and reasonably priced experiences, making vineyard discovery open to a much broader audience than many travellers expect.

Over the years, I have visited dozens of properties throughout Bordeaux, from the limestone slopes of St-Emilion on the Right Bank to the gravel terraces of the Médoc on the Left, and some of the most memorable experiences were also the simplest: a tasting led by someone from the estate, a casual lunch overlooking the vines, or a slow afternoon wandering through the gardens with a glass in hand.

These quieter moments often leave a stronger impression than the most polished tasting rooms. Several estates combine wine visits with dining in the vineyards, allowing visitors to turn a tasting into a longer, more immersive experience.

Dining in the vineyards

In St-Emilion, Château de Candale’s Atelier de Candale restaurant offers a relaxed setting overlooking the rolling slopes, where regional dishes are served with the estate’s wines and views stretch across the surrounding vineyards and medieval village.

On the Left Bank in the heart of Margaux, Château Marquis de Terme places a strong emphasis on food and wine pairing, with a chef-led restaurant menu built around seasonal produce and designed to complement the estate’s wines. It offers a way to experience Left Bank wines at the table rather than only in the tasting room.

Picnic at a château

If there is one experience many locals genuinely enjoy in the region, it is picnicking at a château. Several estates prepare picnic baskets that visitors can enjoy in their gardens after a tour.

The formula is uncomplicated: bread, local charcuterie, cheese and a bottle of wine, consumed slowly among the vines.

Château Soutard (St-Emilion, a 10-minute walk northeast of the town centre) and Château de Cérons (Cérons, in the Graves region, along the river Garonne south of the city) both offer excellent picnic options in beautiful surroundings.

Within the town of St-Emilion itself, the Couvent des Cordeliers offers another easy option, where visitors can assemble a picnic on-site and enjoy it in the cloister courtyard.

Cook it yourself

For those looking for more hands-on experiences, Château Malartic-Lagravière (in the Pessac-Léognan appellation, just south of the city) organises cooking workshops that combine food preparation with wine pairing.

Château 'escape' games

Companies such as Oenanim host oenological escape games inside working estates such as Château Pas de l’Ane and Château Balestard la Tonnelle (both in St-Emilion).

Cycling in the vineyards

Cycling is another enjoyable way to explore the vineyards. E-bikes make vineyard exploration much more accessible, less strenuous and eco-friendly, often with free or low-cost rentals from estates – it’s always worth enquiring.

In Sauternes, a little further down the river from Cérons, Château Guiraud provides bikes as part of its vineyard tours, allowing guests to ride through the appellation, while across the Garonne, north of Libourne, the Prieuré Marquet estate offers cycling and carriage tours across its property.

Winery tours for art lovers

Several Bordeaux estates place art and aesthetics at the centre of their identity, offering visitors an experience that goes beyond wine alone.

St-Emilion Grand Cru Classé estate Château de Ferrand – owned since 1978 by the Bich family (of Bic pen fame) – integrates contemporary art throughout the property.

Highlights include a strikingly designed tasting room (Salon Bic, featuring a mural created with Bic pens by artist Alexandre Doucin) and rotating exhibitions from the family’s Bic Contemporary Art Collection, blending wine heritage with creative storytelling.

In the Médoc’s Margaux appellation, Château d’Arsac is well known for its outdoor sculpture park, where modern artworks punctuate the vineyard landscape.

Back in Pessac-Léognan, Château Smith Haut Lafitte is renowned for its established art collection. Visitors can also discover the Forest of the Senses, a walking trail combining art installations and nature.

Meanwhile, Château Malromé, located near St-André-du-Bois in the Entre-deux-Mers region, connects wine with fine art history as the former family home of painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The château now houses a museum dedicated to his life and work.

Where to eat and drink in Bordeaux city

Bordeaux is synonymous with wine, but it is equally compelling as a food city. Beyond its numerous Michelin-starred restaurants, the city offers a wide range of informal, good-value places where visitors can experience regional cooking in relaxed settings.

Bordeaux wine bars to visit

One of the easiest ways to experience everyday Bordeaux life is through its wine bars.

Wine bars here are not only about wine; they function as casual neighbourhood venues where people share plates, open bottles and often end up staying for dinner.

Wine More Time

Wine More Time is a good example, offering small sharing plates built around high-quality locally produced charcuterie, cheeses and seasonal ingredients, paired with a strong by-the-glass selection that includes many organic and small-producer wines.

On warmer days, sitting at one of the outdoor tables on Rue St-James, in sight of the Grosse Cloche (one of Bordeaux’s oldest medieval bell towers), is an experience that’s hard to beat.

ComplanTerra

Nearby in Rue Ste-Colombe, ComplanTerra focuses largely on organic, biodynamic and natural wines, with a food offering centred on simple, well-sourced products.

The atmosphere is relaxed and slightly alternative, and the occasional oyster evenings are a nice reminder of Bordeaux’s close ties to the Atlantic coast.

L’Officine

L’Officine in St-Seurin, a residential neighbourhood just to the northwest of the historic centre, is a place where friends meet after work or gather to celebrate.

It offers a carefully chosen wine list alongside tartines, charcuterie and small plates, in a setting that feels cosy, lively and very local.

Traditional restaurants: Bouillon revival

For travellers looking for traditional French cooking at reasonable prices, Bordeaux has embraced the bouillon revival.

The city now has three bouillon-style restaurants – establishments that serve classic dishes such as steak frites, beef tartare, oeufs mayonnaise or leeks vinaigrette, in generous portions and without ceremony.

These are located near Gare St-Jean, in the historic St-Pierre district and close to Place des Quinconces, a short walk north of the Grand Théâtre building on Place de la Comédie.

Bordeaux bistros with a local vibe

Bistros remain another essential part of Bordeaux’s dining culture, and are one of the easiest ways to eat well without heading into fine-dining territory.

Bo-Tannique

Bo-Tannique in Rue Tustal, east of the impressive St-André cathedral, is my go-to place whenever I have guests who are visiting Bordeaux for the first time.

The menu changes regularly, always based on seasonal produce, with dishes that feel creative but never overworked, and a wine list that makes it easy to explore interesting bottles without overspending.

Le Bouchon Bordelais

Le Bouchon Bordelais, tucked away down the cobbled Rue Courbin, leans more towards a modern take on regional cuisine from southwest France.

The menu changes every month according to what is in season, with dishes inspired by local traditions but presented in a lighter, more contemporary way.

It is a good place to understand how classic flavours of the region are being reinterpreted without losing their roots.

Oysters at Marché des Capucins

If there is one place that captures everyday Bordeaux at its most authentic, it is the Marché des Capucins, between the historic centre and Gare St-Jean, which is often referred to as ‘the belly of the city’.

Unlike many French markets where visitors mainly come to shop, Capucins also functions as one of Bordeaux’s gastronomic centres, with numerous counters and small eateries.

Here, many people come primarily to eat. You will find Basque influences alongside classic French dishes. The main attraction, however, is oysters.

At Chez Jean-Mi, locals gather for plates of number ‘3’ or ‘4’ oysters served with lemon, bread and butter and accompanied by a glass of dry white Bordeaux.

Although Arcachon Bay, on the coast to the west, remains the historic heart of oyster farming, enjoying oysters at Capucins is one of the simplest and most representative food experiences the city offers.

For visitors seeking authenticity and value, this everyday food culture offers a far clearer picture of Bordeaux than its most exclusive tables.

Beyond the vineyards

Bordeaux is a lively city with a strong cultural scene, and many of its most enjoyable experiences come from exploring at an easy pace.

One of the most enjoyable ways to see Bordeaux is from the Garonne river. Short sightseeing or aperitif cruises offer views of the city’s 18th-century facades, bridges and riverfront while enjoying a glass of wine or a light snack, giving a simple introduction to Bordeaux’s port heritage.

Beyond wine, Bordeaux is also home to other forms of local craftsmanship that are worth discovering. In the city’s imposing former World War II submarine base, Moon Harbour produces French single malt whisky within one of the site’s massive concrete bunkers.

It is the only whisky distillery in Bordeaux itself, and visits include an introduction to the distillation and ageing process followed by a tasting, offering a refreshing and unexpected counterpoint to Bordeaux’s wine-focused identity.

Next-door, Bassins des Lumières transforms the enormous chambers of the submarine base into immersive digital art exhibitions dedicated to major artists and contemporary creations.

For a more informal experience, renting a bike is one of the best ways to explore Bordeaux. Bike rental stations are spread across the city, and one of the most popular routes is the loop from Pont de Pierre to Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas.

This ride allows visitors to see several faces of Bordeaux in one outing: the historic centre, the former port and warehouse district around Bacalan, and La Bastide, the greener, more residential neighbourhood over the river on the Right Bank.

On the Right Bank

The Right Bank, in particular, feels more local and less touristic. It is where many Bordelais spend their weekends, especially around places such as Chez Alriq for live music and riverside drinks, or Darwin Ecosystem, a former military barracks turned into a creative hub with street art, cafes, workshops and an alternative, community-driven atmosphere. Both can be found in La Bastide.

Many visitors also find that some of their most enjoyable moments in Bordeaux come from simply wandering: walking between neighbourhoods, stopping for coffee or a glass of wine, browsing small shops and lingering in public squares.

Where to stay in Bordeaux

In the city

Travellers do not need luxury hotels to enjoy a comfortable and well-located stay in Bordeaux.

The city centre offers a wide choice of small guesthouses and boutique-style properties that provide a more personal experience than large international chains.

In St-Seurin to the west of the city centre, Maison Manège offers elegant rooms in a historic building within walking distance of the main sights.

Villa Victor Louis, also centrally located, provides a similar balance of character and convenience.

For a more affordable base, Bordeaux Cosy B&B in the Nansouty neighbourhood, 2km south of the city, allows visitors to stay slightly outside the busiest streets while remaining within easy reach of the city centre.

In or near the vineyards

For travellers willing to venture beyond the city, the surrounding countryside offers memorable alternatives. Les Roulottes Vesta in the heart of the Pessac-Léognan appellation on the Left Bank provides wooden caravans and atypical gîtes set in natural surroundings, appealing to those looking for something a little different.

Sleeping among the vineyards remains one of the most rewarding options.

Estates such as Château de La Rivière in Fronsac on the Right Bank and Château de la Grave in the commune of Bourg offer guest rooms within working wineries, allowing visitors to wake up with views over the vines rather than city streets.

Enjoy a different side to Bordeaux

Whether you choose to stay in the heart of the city or among the vineyards, Bordeaux rewards travellers who take the time to explore beyond its most famous names.

From relaxed château visits and vineyard picnics to market lunches, wine bars and easy cultural experiences, the region offers so many varied ways to enjoy great wine and food simply and authentically, without excess.

For those looking for a more approachable side of Bordeaux, the most memorable moments are more often than not found in simple places, good bottles and everyday settings.

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Cheval Blanc 2025 released en primeur

Cheval Blanc 2025 was released in the fledgling Bordeaux en primeur campaign on Monday (11 May), and was offered by UK merchants at around £2,010 per six bottles in bond (IB).

It's among the first big names to emerge in the en primeur campaign for a much-admired Bordeaux 2025 vintage.

Rated 96 points by Decanter’s Georgie Hindle, Cheval Blanc 2025 represents one of the smallest vintages on record at the St-Emilion property – which could be a factor for collectors considering whether or not to purchase en primeur.

UK merchant Farr Vintners said it was the smallest Cheval Blanc vintage since 1961, except for 1991 when the wine wasn’t made.

Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, said Cheval Blanc was consequently releasing ‘all produced wine en primeur – Cheval Blanc will not hold back their usual third of production for ageing’.

It said the ex-négociant price on Cheval Blanc 2025 was €336 per bottle, up 20% year-on-year – although last year’s price was the lowest at en primeur since 2008.

Corney & Barrow reported 55,000 bottles of Cheval Blanc 2025 were produced, versus 128,000 in 2023. It added that the 2025 was cheaper than other recent, high-quality vintages, except for 2020.

‘Although the release price falls above our target price range, we believe this high quality wine deserves the attention of followers of the estate.’

Based on recent Decanter analysis of Cheval Blanc back to the 2014 vintage, using Liv-ex Market Price data, the 2025 en primeur offer is below the 11-vintage average price from 2014 to 2014, which was £4,243 (12x75cl IB) at the time of publication.

Early days for the campaign

It remains early days for this year’s Bordeaux en primeur campaign, with only a few wines so far released.

Châteaux must balance a challenging market picture against a highly regarded – yet small – 2025 crop.

Pontet-Canet kicked things off at the end of April and Miles Davis, market expert at Vinum Fine Wines, with offices in the UK and Asia, said this week that the merchant ‘sold a lot more than we thought we would’.

It won’t make or break the merchant’s year, but there are clearly still buyers who enjoy purchasing en primeur, he said.

Geraint Carter, of international merchant Bordeaux Index, said Pontet-Canet sold ‘reasonably well’, although he said the price was still on the high side – dampening the potential for wider interest.

L’Evangile and Fieuzal out of the blocks

Pomerol’s L’Evangile, which is part of Domaines Baron de Rothschild (Lafite), also released its 2025 vintage en primeur this week. Liv-ex said the wine was €96 per bottle ex-négociant, which is flat on last year’s release price.

Decanter’s Hindle rated L’Evangile 2025 at 96pts.

UK merchants offered the wine at around £582 (6x75cl IB), and Farr Vintners said that represents the lowest release price since 2014.

‘This [is] a welcome return to realistic pricing for one of the big names of Pomerol,’ it said.

Switching the focus to Pessac Léognan, Château de Fieuzal 2025 could be a value proposition to watch.

Rated 94pts for Decanter by Bordeaux expert Panos Kakaviatos, Château de Fieuzal 2025 red was offered in the UK at around £140 (6x75cl IB).

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On the Right Bank, or eastern side, of the Dordogne river, St-Emilion is one of Bordeaux’s most famous appellations, yet also one of its most complex.

Too often it’s defined solely by its upper echelon of Grand Cru Classé wines – the top-rated St-Emilion estates declared in an official classification that’s revised every 10 years.

Yet St-Emilion is, in reality, vast, fragmented and richly diverse, encompassing a patchwork of communes and terroirs that extend well beyond the medieval town itself.

Alongside prestigious châteaux sit modest, often family-run estates producing some of Bordeaux’s most compelling value wines.

For this reason, we turn our eye to the next rung on the quality ladder: St-Emilion Grand Cru (not ‘Classé’).

Sitting above the many wines that are labelled simply ‘St-Emilion’, Grand Cru is the dynamic middle ground that unites quality, personality and affordability.

There is inevitably confusion surrounding these levels of St-Emilion’s wine hierarchy.

St-Emilion refers simply to the appellation as a whole, while St-Emilion Grand Cru is a separate appellation.

To qualify for it, producers must be located within the delimited geographical/terroir area and adhere to stricter production rules, including lower yields, a slightly higher minimum alcohol and longer requirements for ageing before release.

A wine labelled St-Emilion Grand Cru is therefore not necessarily from a ‘classified’ château, and it is precisely within this Grand Cru category that some of the appellation’s best values can be found.

Freedom of expression

The appellation itself spans 5,450 hectares and eight communes: St-Emilion, St-Christophe-des-Bardes, St-Etienne-de-Lisse, St-Hippolyte, St-Laurent-des-Combes, St-Pey-d’Armens, St-Sulpice-de-Faleyrens and Vignonet.

This geographical breadth is matched by considerable geological and climatic variation – four principal soil types shape the style of the wines.

At the heart of the appellation lies the limestone plateau surrounding the medieval town of St-Emilion.

While vine rooting is limited by the bedrock, the porous limestone acts like a sponge, supplying water via capillary action during dry summers and preserving freshness in the resulting wines.

On the surrounding slopes, particularly in St-Christophe-des-Bardes, St-Hippolyte and St-Laurent-des-Combes, clay-limestone soils allow deeper root penetration, good drainage and moderated water supply, producing structured, complex wines built for ageing.

Further east, particularly around St-Etienne-deLisse and St-Pey-d’Armens, a subtle Mediterranean influence introduces slightly warmer conditions, favouring ripeness and plush fruit.

By contrast, in the southern sector of the appellation, including St-Sulpice-de-Faleyrens and Vignonet, closer to the Dordogne, gravelly and sandy soils derived from alluvial deposits dominate.

These free-draining, heat-retentive soils encourage early ripening and fruit-forward styles that are accessible in youth, though the best examples retain the capacity to age.

This mosaic of soils and influences underpins the appeal of St-Emilion Grand Cru as a value category.

Free of the expectations and pricing pressures of achieving or maintining classification, many Grand Cru producers – including standalone non-classified properties and second wines of classified estates – focus on site expression and measured use of oak.

The result is a broad stylistic spectrum, from taut, limestone-driven wines to more generous, fruit-led expressions, all of which offer genuine St-Emilion character at very affordable prices.

Selecting just 18 wines from such a deep pool is no easy task.

The wines I’ve chosen here are selected for consistency, a clear sense of place and real value, offering a compelling snapshot of an appellation where discovery remains part of the pleasure.

St-Emilion Grand Cru

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Andrew Lloyd Webber sells wine cellar 'treasures' for charity

Bidders from around the world vied for rare Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne and other legendary wines previously collected by Andrew Lloyd Webber, in a special charity auction hosted by Christie’s to benefit the provision of musical instruments in schools.

Every lot found a buyer in the sale, which raised £517,910 for The Music in Secondary Schools Trust (MiSST), Christie’s said.

It said all hammer proceeds from the auction will go to The Andrew Lloyd Webber Programme, which is administered by MiSST and provides access to free instruments, weekly tuition and a classical music curriculum.

Sale highlights

A single bottle of Château Margaux 1900 sold for £35,000, including the buyer’s premium, way above its pre-sale high estimate of £7,000, showed Christie’s results from the auction, which ended on 6 May.

Now more than 125 years old, the wine’s label features the name ‘Pillet-Will’; Count Pillet-Will acquired the esteemed first growth estate in 1879.

While it is particularly rare to see wines of this age going under the hammer, Christie’s said the highest-priced lots in the Andrew Lloyd Webber cellar auction were wines from Burgundy’s fabled Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC).

Three bottles of Romanée-Conti Grand Cru 2005 sold for £56,250 including the buyer’s premium (high estimate: £45,000).

With 100% of hammer proceeds to be donated, Christie’s said the lot raised £45,000 for the MiSST-led programme.

Six bottles of DRC La Tâche 2005 sold for £50,000 including buyer’s premium (high e: £30,000), and Christie’s said the lot raised £40,000 for charity.

'Music empowers young people'

Andrew Lloyd Webber said, ‘I am absolutely delighted that the sale of my wine cellar has raised over a half a million pounds for my music in schools programme. To date over 30,000 children have taken part in the project and the sale means that 4,000 additional kids will be able to join.

‘The beneficial power of music education in schools has long proved to be a no-brainer. Quite simply, music empowers young people.

'From academic achievement to solving social behaviour and mental health issues, the benefits to the whole community, not just the young students, are demonstrably proven.'

The musical impresario behind hits such as Cats and Phantom of the Opera also criticised successive UK governments for their lack of support.

Adam Bilbey, senior vice president, and global head of wine and spirits at Christie’s, said, ‘This sale delivered exceptional results for a cellar of outstanding provenance. Collectors responded strongly to the rarity and historical significance of the wines, with sustained bidding throughout the online sale.

'We are particularly proud that the proceeds (full hammer total) will support The Music in Secondary Schools Trust and its transformative work in music education.’

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Welcome to Decanter's Bordeaux Guide 2026

Our Bordeaux Guide for 2026 brings you all the latest from one of the wine world's benchmark regions, and one in which deep-rooted tradition is brilliantly integrated with forward-looking dynamism.

Published alongside Decanter magazine's May 2026 issue, the guide also follows hot on the heels of our new en primeur report on the exciting Bordeaux 2025 vintage – featuring tasting notes on hundreds of wines.

A message from Bordeaux editor Georgie Hindle

Hello Bordeaux lovers, and welcome to this year’s guide! There’s nowhere quite like Bordeaux when it comes to pure wine joy.

It’s a region bursting with possibility – diverse, multi-generational and always ready to surprise you with something new, whether it’s a brilliant hidden-value gem or a legendary bottle that stops you in your tracks.

Every sip feels like an invitation to dive deeper, laugh louder and connect over glasses that tell stories.

This year brings a poignant yet uplifting reminder of how to embrace that joy fully, with the passing of two major figures of the industry, Michel Rolland and Daniel Cathiard.

Their legendary reverence for life, passion for great wine, good food, lively conversations with friends, travel and pure pleasure should stay with all of us.

So let’s open bottles, share them generously, debate passionately and let wine do what it does best: bring people together.

And bring people together it does. While headlines love to say we’re drinking and buying less, Bordeaux quietly proves otherwise. It remains one of the very best – if not the absolute best – regions on earth for sparking real excitement and enjoyment, with outstanding wines in every style and at every budget.

This is best emphasised by Marc Bouffard’s article covering his pick of 10 top-value estates among the 1855 Grands Crus Classés – yes, it is still possible to find bargains among these well-known names.

Panos Kakaviatos assesses all 14 third growths to see who is overdelivering on quality for price, and I take an intimate look at Château Batailley, a ‘pillar of value’ for Pauillac.

In our coverage of what turned out to be an extraordinary and very high-scoring panel tasting, you’ll also find a tranche of 35, no less, 95pt-plus Outstanding wines from the excellent 2020 vintage on Bordeaux’s Right Bank.

These include numerous at accessible prices as low as £20 per bottle in bond, and there are nearly 100 others rated at 90pts or more, with 54 wines in all being awarded our ‘Value’ status, for price and quality within this category.

Plus, in her ‘Expert’s choice’, Valeria Tenison sifts through the vast number of St-Emilion Grand Cru estates to pick 18 worth tracking down.

I hope you enjoy reading this guide as much as I loved putting it together – and that it inspires you to find some wonderful bottles to continue your Bordeaux journey.

What's inside Decanter's Bordeaux Guide 2026

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Pontet-Canet and Batailley both have a reputation for releasing early and they duly kick-started this year’s en primeur campaign as Decanter published its full report on the exciting Bordeaux 2025 vintage.

All eyes are on pricing after official en primeur tastings in April drew plenty of admirers, living up to a lofty reputation for years ending in 'five' in Bordeaux.

Bordeaux’s class of 2025 is entering a turbulent economic landscape and a wine market still finding its feet after a prolonged downturn – which is also widely reported to be well-stocked with young Bordeaux vintages.

Pontet-Canet makes debut

At £378 per six bottles in bond (IB) in the UK, Pontet-Canet 2025 was slightly more expensive than last year’s 2024-vintage release, which debuted at £360.

On an ex-négociant basis in Bordeaux, though, Pontet-Canet 2025 was €58 per bottle, according to Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade – slightly under last year’s release at €60.

Pontet-Canet 2025 received 97pts from Decanter’s Bordeaux correspondent, Georgie Hindle – equal to its scores in 2024 and 2023.

Hindle praised the 2025 iteration as ‘structured and fresh with a great promise of long ageing’, and enthused about the wine’s ‘brilliant purity of fruit’.

Shortly after the release, UK merchant Corney & Barrow said Pontet-Canet 2025 was more expensive than the current market price of the well-regarded 2019 vintage and ‘fell well short of our fair value bracket of £224-280 per six [x75cl IB]’. However, it said this biodynamic fifth growth has a loyal following.

On Tuesday (5 May) Thomas Parker MW, of merchant Farr Vintners, said strong appraisal from at least one major critic ‘really gave sales a boost’.

Batailley 2025 price 'lowest since 2014'

Batailley 2025 was rated 96pts by Decanter’s Hindle, who said, ‘I have a real soft spot for this wine and it delivers again with such great quality-to-price ratio.’

Liv-ex quoted a UK release price per 12-bottle case (IB) of £289 for Batailley 2025, which it said was 'the lowest since 2014'.

Many merchants offer en primeur wines in six-bottle cases, albeit other formats are available, too.

Farr Vintners offered Batailley at £144.60 per six-bottle case (IB) and Parker told Decanter on Tuesday (5 May), ‘It was good to see the price come down from last year.

'There was a clear understanding that success in selling this vintage must factor in the current demand for young Bordeaux and global economic and political uncertainty. We therefore offered and sold a decent volume of the wine as a result.’

Moueix wines make debut

Right Bank heavyweights from JP Moueix stable joined these top Left Bank names early this week.

Among the wines to be offered, La Fleur-Pétrus 2025 (95pts) debuted at £725 per six-bottle case (Farr, Bordeaux Index), slightly above last year’s debut price for the 2024 vintage. Bélair-Monange 2025 (96pts) was offered at £530 per six, similar to last year.

‘Gorgeous aromas, such a concoction of freshly picked red and black fruit with rose petals and violet touches,’ wrote Hindle of Bélair-Monange 2025, adding, ‘Another dark horse, not yet fully shining but with excellent potential.’

Laroque: A St-Emilion ‘value pick’ to watch

Château Laroque 2025 represents ‘another great success and value pick’ from this St-Emilion Grand Cru Classé estate, wrote Decanter’s Hindle after tasting the wine en primeur. She gave it 96pts.

UK merchant Lay & Wheeler offered Laroque 2025 for £117 (6x75cl IB) on Tuesday 5 May, also highlighting the value proposition on offer to buyers.

Justerini & Brooks offered similar praise, stating, ‘David Suire's Laroque must rank amongst the best value wines of the right bank. Since his arrival in 2015, critics have heaped praise on his wines, and for the time being they remain relatively affordable (relative to wines with similar scores).’

More releases this week

Other releases this week have included Doisy-Védrines 2025 (94pts) and Coutet 2025 (95pts) from Barsac (Sauternes) at £152 and £168 per 6x75cl IB respectively.

Meanwhile, Thursday 7 May saw debuts for Château Pape Clément 2025 red and also white wine Pape Clément Blanc in Pessac-Léognan.

Hindle rated both wines at 96pts, with the red offered by UK merchants at around £316 and the white wine at £543-£544 (6x75cl IB).

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From the southern Château de Taillan, on the edge of the Bordeaux metropolitan area, to the northernmost Château Noaillac, the distance is about 70km – more than an hour’s drive.

Some estates are close to the estuary, others further inland; some are on gravel, others on clay-limestone or sandy soils. The diversity of terroir is therefore considerable.

In the hot and dry 2025 vintage, vineyards with clay or limestone subsoils had a better chance of avoiding hydric stress, which can shut down the vines, stop photosynthesis, and hinder tannin ripening, resulting in bitter, astringent wines.

Even the rain at the beginning of September did not help much in vineyards on very free-draining sandy or gravel soils, where water drained away quickly.

On clay soils, however, vines were able to retain more water, slightly increasing berry size, lowering concentration, and marginally improving yields, which are extremely low this year.

Some Cru Bourgeois estates harvested as little as 17hl/ha, a level that is not financially sustainable in the long term.

A question of quality

In terms of quality, some estates in St-Estèphe, where clay content is higher, performed particularly well.

With many partially shrivelled berries, strict sorting was key to success. As most Cru Bourgeois estates harvest by machine, much has depended on technical parameters and financial possibilities.

Given the already low yields, sorting was often limited, which in some cases resulted in coarse tannins and cooked fruit.

Surprisingly, despite the hot vintage, alcohol levels are almost universally moderate, barely exceeding 13.5%, due to the vine shutdown and the consequent pause in sugar accumulation.

Overall, as elsewhere in Bordeaux, 2025 was a heterogeneous vintage for Cru Bourgeois estates, with both very successful wines and others that struggled.

The range of scores clearly reflects this.

Further reading from this report

• Pomerol
• St-Emilion
• Pessac-Léognan & Graves
• Dry whites
• Pauillac
• St-Estèphe
• Margaux
• St-Julien
• Sauternes

Bordeaux 2025: Top wines from the Crus Bourgeois

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Despite significant summer heat and drought, many producers crafted wines with adequate acidity and moderate alcohol levels, thanks largely to early harvesting decisions and, in many cases, naturally small berries with concentrated acids.

As Antoine Médeville, enologist with the Médoc wine consultant Oenoconseil, explained, the pace of the harvest was unusually rapid.

‘We never picked grapes as early or as quickly as we did this year, starting around 15 August,’ Médeville said.

‘It had to happen quickly, as we were already seeing low acidities and wanted to preserve freshness.

‘In a normal harvest, many of our clients would make three passes in the vineyard, but this time, many only did the harvest in just one quick go.’

Such haste and extremes are rarely ideal, and not all wines found their balance.

A longer, more gradual harvest window generally allows for greater precision. And 2025 cannot match such excellent dry white vintages in Bordeaux as 2014 or 2017.

And yet, concerns about the unusually compressed picking period may be somewhat overstated.

The dry white at Château Margaux, for example, showed strong balance and freshness, suggesting that timely decisions could deliver convincing results even under pressure.

As director Philippe Bascaules observed, such conditions are in fact less problematic for whites than for reds.

‘It is enough to harvest earlier,’ he noted, even if a shorter ripening period is not ideal.

He added that hot, dry conditions are ‘more concerning’ for reds than for whites, remarking: ‘Now I finally understand why Greek dry whites are better than their reds.’

Well-timed picking

This perspective helps explain why, even in a challenging year, well-timed picking preserved freshness and avoided excessive alcohol: key factors behind the vintage’s success.

One of my favourite wines from the Médoc is the Brane-Cantenac blanc, harvested between 20–28 August from vines on cooler clay soils, and a marked improvement over the inaugural 2019, which showed a more overtly varietal profile.

Some readers may wonder whether the late August rains played a role, but most producers say they were not decisive, as many white grapes had already been harvested.

‘The grapes were ready to pick before the rains,’ Médeville stressed.

That said, cooler terroirs, whether due to microclimate or deeper clay and limestone soils, allowed for harvesting into early September.

In these cases, producers such as Olivier Bernard of Domaine de Chevalier suggest that waiting slightly longer helped to achieve better ripeness and balance.

Outcomes nevertheless vary. While some wines lean toward either softness or angularity, the stronger examples reconcile freshness with sufficient ripeness.

Winemaking choices also proved critical: Médeville emphasised that lees stirring (bâtonnage) played an important role in not only building texture and mid-palate weight, helping to integrate the vintage’s naturally high acidity, but also for binding oxygen and oxidative compounds, slowing down oxidation.

What's new?

Dry whites are one of the clearest growth stories in Bordeaux right now.

2025 marked the first widespread commercial releases under the new AOC Médoc Blanc designation.

White cuvées such as Baron de Brane, Les Griffons de Pichon Baron, Caillou Blanc de Talbot and De Malleret Blanc will be designated under the new label.

First-ever or expanded white projects have appeared across the region.

Château Meyney produced Bordeaux’s potentially only Blanc de Noir dry whites – 100% Cabernet Sauvignon vinified as white from silt and gravel soils with a 9,000-bottle production.

Ormes de Pez released the first vintage from newly planted Sauvignon and Sémillon inside St-Estèphe (replacing Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon on 4ha).

Château du Tertre introduced the second vintage (but first EP tasting) of its new white wine project, Alba, a blend of Chardonnay and Gros Manseng on sandy soils as a sister wine to its main white wine.

Château Siran made its first dry white in 50 years – a single barrel of Chardonnay and Chenin bottled as Vin de France.

Château La Lagune launched the first vintage of its white wine made from Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc from 3ha of vines grafted in 2023 and a further 2ha grafted last year.

Château Montrose incorporated Marsanne and Roussanne into its blanc for the first time.

Château Léoville Las Cases presented the first vintage of its white white, a project that started in 2019 with the purchase of seven vineyard plots (2.5ha) in the northern Médoc.

It is a blend of 50% Sémillon, 25% Roussanne and 25% Marsanne and will be labelled as a Vin de France.

Its inception co-incided with the arrival of Arnauld Hubert who wrote his thesis on Bordeaux whites for his degree at Bordeaux Sciences Agro, an elite engineering school specialising in agricultural sciences, food, environment and related fields..

Further reading from this report

• Pomerol
• St-Emilion
• Pessac-Léognan & Graves
• Crus Bourgeois
• Pauillac
• St-Estèphe
• Margaux
• St-Julien
• Sauternes

Bordeaux 2025: Top dry white wines

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Sauternes and Barsac produced a host of pure and luscious sweet wines in 2025.

The Ciron river’s morning mists combined with warm, sunny days and late August/early September rainfall created near-perfect conditions for the spread of rapid and even noble rot; while the clay-limestone and gravel terroirs retained just enough moisture to prevent excessive shrivelling.

The late-August rains refreshed the vines without diluting sugars, and the cool September nights preserved acidity with a window of dry, sunny and windy weather concentrating the grapes towards the end of September and beginning of October.

Château Coutet completed six passes between 17 September and 14 October with homogeneous noble rot each time.

Château Filhot, Château Lamothe Guignard and Château Lafaurie-Peyraguey all noted the ideal mist-and-sun cycles that produced pure, concentrated musts.

The result is wines of remarkable aromatic purity and precision – rich in botrytis-driven notes of quince, apricot, honey and exotic fruit, yet supported by vibrant freshness, refined texture and a saline minerality that gives them lift and ageing potential.

Many estates achieved high residual sugars (140-158 g/l) with excellent acidity and lower pH than in hotter years, producing a classic yet energetic style that sits comfortably between the concentration of 2023 and the harmony of 2015.

Flirting with perfection

Yields in Sauternes are always tiny (25hl/ha is the maximum allowed) but some 2025 crops were wince-inducingly small, such as Château Broustet's 8hl/ha.

Château d'Arche was below average at 11hl/ha but Château Guiraud managed 15hl/ha, and both Château Caillou and Château Doisy-Védrines 14hl/ha.

Pierre Montégut technical director of Château Suduiraut described the 2025 as ‘like 2023 for sugar’ (the 2025 is a very rich 158 g/l), and comparable to the great 2009 and 2010 vintages.

Sandrine Garbay at Château Guiraud (145 g/l residual sugar) said the conditions were ‘great for the vines’ with an ‘early start, no frost and no issues with the weather’.

She added that after the first rain at the end of August and beginning of September, the period from mid-September to mid-October was ‘perfect with humidity in the morning sometimes from rain and then dry in the day’.

This allowed three successful sortings with a ‘high concentration of sugar’ but als, ‘high acidity giving a classic expression not so far from 2023, and from 2015 which was such a perfect vintage’.

What's new

Château d’Yquem: Lorenzo Pasquini officially took over from Pierre Lurton. Pasquini had been estate manager / technical director / operations director since 2020 and was mentored by Lurton who originally recruited him in 2015 for Cheval des Andes. Pierre Lurton remains chairman, focusing on external relations and strategic direction.

Further reading from this report

• Pomerol
• St-Emilion
• Pessac-Léognan & Graves
• Dry whites
• Crus Bourgeois
• Pauillac
• St-Estèphe
• Margaux
• St-Julien

Bordeaux 2025: Top wines from Sauternes

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St-Emilion delivered wines of striking diversity and terroir transparency.

Limestone and clay-limestone plateau plots – the appellation’s signature soils – produced the most refined, balanced and vibrant expressions.

The slower sugar accumulation leading to wines with naturally higher acidity, refined tannins and lifted aromatics that gave the vintage a classic yet energetic feel.

In contrast, parcels with more gravel influence faced greater water stress, leading to extremely low yields and tighter, more concentrated fruit that required very precise management.

Frédéric Faye, technical director at Château Figeac, detailed the extreme drought after flowering (only 400mm of rain vs 850mm in a normal year), slow sap flow, cold nights and phenolic ripeness arriving before sugar, resulting in intense flavours and classic vinification.

He said: ‘We had 10 days throughout June, July and August over 40 degrees but the nights were cold so the vines could breathe.’

The late-August rains and cool September nights proved decisive everywhere, refreshing the vines and preserving acidity without dilution.

What emerged was a vintage of real personality: floral and mineral-driven, with juicy red and blue fruit, focused structure and a stony finish – less opulent or heavy than 2022, more balanced and drinkable than many recent warm years, yet still serious and age-worthy.

Lifesaving rain after the heat

Heat (and its consequences) is a major theme of the vintage

Nicolas Corpandy, technical director at Château Cheval Blanc, noted that there were 10 days above 35°C and a peak of 41.6°C on 11 August.

But, he added, that the 59mm of rain between 20–31 August, ‘revitalised the vines and freshened up the style’ and helped aromatics, freshness and phenolic maturity.

At Château Quintus, part of the Domaine Clarence Dillon stable, the message was: ‘without the rain at the end of August, we would have produced syrup’.

David Suire, technical director at Château Laroque, highlighted the ‘best possible conditions in the area for this kind of vintage’ on limestone and clay with old vines, noting the terroir ‘shines this year’ and the rain was ‘beneficial for freshness’.

He added; ’the vines really preserved themselves this year, they produced less sugar so less alcohol and had a slow evolution of the aromatics’.

He also noted that many of the previous ‘best vintages’ had much high alcohols: ‘For 25 years at least all outstanding vintages have had higher alcohol than this year which changes the sensation and balance of the wines. It’s possibly a new 2016 but with less alcohol and less firm than 2016.’

He said it was, ‘a vintage that will stay in our memories for a long time’.

Yields (and the lack of them)

Despite the rain, the heat meant grapes were ready for picking early. Nicolas Audebert, technical director at Château Canon and Château Berliquet, noted that his teams were out as early as 28 August.

Château Troplong-Mondot began exactly a month later – 28 September – but still a record early start, while Château Ausone started on 2 September.

Something that is a big feature of the 2025 vintage is the extreme disparity in yields.

Cheval Blanc's Corpandy reported an exceptionally low yield of only 15hl/ha – one of the lowest of any major estate and something the team has never experienced before.

Charlotte Krajewski, technical director and chief winemaker at Château Clos Cantenac (and also Château Seraphine in Pomerol), recorded a yield of 25hl/ha, the smallest harvest ever.

At Troplong-Mondot, the picking teams noted extreme variations in yield from one plot to another – from 12hl/ha to 40hl/ha giving an average of 27hl/ha.

Then again, Château Canon achieved great yields of 40hl/ha – mostly due to the homogeneity of Canon’s vineyards on the plateau.

Diminishing returns

Others also intentionally sought lower yields. Gregory Leymarie, new managing director at Château Valandraud, after Jean-Luc Thunevin sold his majority share earlier this year, oversaw stricter selection and lower yields of 36–37hl/ha.

He said for the first time not everything harvested on ‘grand vin’ plots will make it into the top red wine with a strict selection decreasing production from roughly 40-50,000 bottles down to around 35,000 bottles.

Similarly for the estate’s second wine, Virginie de Valandraud, the production will also decrease by roughly half to give the wine ‘a better signature’.

But while lower yields can mean higher quality, the balance with commercial viability comes into play.

The team at Château Bellefont Belcier, for example, picked 28hl/ha when closer to 40hl is considered necessary to start covering costs.

And such is the size of the harvest that certain cuvées won't appear this year, especially second labels such as Petit Cheval and Chapelle d’Ausone.

Happy overall

Nonetheless, most châteaux seemed happy with what they had accomplished given the tricky circumstances.

Benjamin Laforet, technical director at Château Angelus, said the biggest flex was, ‘to say we can produce wines people are eager to drink in bottle even in these conditions’.

Comparing and contrasting years, Jean-Christophe Meyrou, general manager of Vignobles K described 2025 as having ‘better potential than 2020 and 2022 with more balance and more definition’ as well as an ‘interesting touch of tannins and lower alcohol’.

Nicolas Audebert described 2025 as a combination of, ‘parts of 2016 and something of 2022 – there’s a balance between freshness and maturity with energy, intensity, concentration and density’.

Julien Barthe at Château Beauséjour Becot praised his 2025 as a ‘distinguished, racy wine – where we have the true identity of the vineyard – you know you’re in Bordeaux’.

Constance Vaulthier at Château Ausone noted: ‘There’s not the opulence of 2022 but a nice balance’.

Finally, Aymeric de Gironde, technical director at Château Troplong Mondot, described 2025 as a mix of 2022 and 2023 expressions with ‘brightness of aromas from 2023, some intensity of the 2022, but more mineral – salivating, fresh, lots of energy’.

However, there was a touch of ruefulness as he concluded: ‘We’ve seen heatwaves in August in every vintage for the last seven years, we know we need to protect freshness and ensure the berries don’t lose their brightness.'

‘2025 is exactly the style of wine we want to make – if only we made more’.

What's new

Chanel has brought its four estates – Rauzan-Ségla (Margaux), Canon and Berliquet (both St-Émilion), and Domaine de l’Île (on the island of Porquerolles) – together under a single unified banner: 'Les Vignobles’.

Each estate will retain full operational autonomy, its own team and its distinct winemaking identity while Nicolas Audebert will continue to oversee the four properties as a whole.

The 2025 vintage will be Jean-Luc Thunevin’s last at Château Valandraud after 35 years.

Planned changes have now formally taken hold for his estates that now mean Marie and Christophe Lefevere, who already own Moulin du Cadet, Soutard-Cadet, Villemaurine, and Sansonnet, have taken full ownership of Château Valandraud as well as the Thunevin négociant business.

At 75, Jean-Luc Thunevin is stepping back from day-to-day involvement at Valandraud while retaining owership of his other projects, including Clos Badon-Thunevin and Clos du Beau Père.

Château La Couspaude (St-Émilion) completed its final vintage under Aubert family ownership before its January 2026 sale with the winemaking now handled by Jean-Christophe Meyrou of Vignobles K.

Further reading from this report

• Pomerol
• Pessac-Léognan & Graves
• Dry whites
• Crus Bourgeois
• Pauillac
• St-Estèphe
• Margaux
• St-Julien
• Sauternes

Bordeaux 2025: Top wines from St-Emilion

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Pomerol, the smallest and most clay-dominant of Bordeaux’s great red-wine appellations, turned the 2025 vintage’s challenges into one of its quiet successes.

Its heavy clay soils with the distinctive iron-rich subsoil (crasse de fer) retained more moisture than the gravel-heavy Left Bank communes, allowing the vines to reach full phenolic ripeness without the extreme stress or over-concentration seen elsewhere.

The late-August rains were described as ‘miraculous’ by several growers, refreshing the vines at exactly the right moment and delivering the vintage’s signature freshness and lower alcohols.

The result is classic Pomerol character – plush blue and black fruit, floral lift and velvety textures – but with greater purity, transparency to terroir and a cool, mineral edge.

Eric Monneret, technical director at Château La Pointe, emphasised that, ‘terroir is 50-75% of the result. If you don’t have some clay or limestone then 2025 would have been difficult'.

Many wines sit between the opulence of 2022 and the precision of 2020 or 2016: fragrant, drinkable and structured, yet without the heat or heaviness that can sometimes mask the clay’s natural elegance.

Tiny black marbles

Quality aside, this already small appellation also produced some of the lowest quantities of wine in Bordeaux this vintage.

Yields are capped at 49hl/ha in Pomerol but many estates recorded crops under half that in 2025.

Although some such as Château Clinet (34hl/ha), L’Eglise Clinet (33hl/ha) and Château Clos du Clocher (32hl/ha) were not so hard it was a different story elsewhere.

Château Seraphine recorded 22hl/ha, the smallest harvest ever. Château Lafleur and Petrus just 20hl/ha, while Château Petit Village recorded just 16hl/ha.

The key cause of this was the water deficit at the start of the season, which gave rise to very small berries and therefore very low amounts of juice.

By way of example, a 'normal' Merlot berry at harvest time would weigh between 1.4 to 1.6 g.

Christian Moueix, president of the négociant house Établissements Jean-Pierre Moueix, noted that since they recorded no rain between 22 May and 22 August, this led to tight small clusters and berry weights of 0.8–0.9 g for Merlot (even 0.7 g on some gravel parcels).

Marielle Cazaux director of and noted the 30mm rain on 20 August ‘watered the plants, gave more juice and softer phenolics’.

Small measures of relief

Although extremely dry and frequently very hot, many winemakers noted that the season was less relentlessly hot than in, say, 2022.

And, even in summer, cooler evenings helped maintain levels of freshness and aromatic definition in the final wines.

Juliette Couderc, technical director of Château L’Evangile, noted that the vintage was drier than 2022 but benefited from cooler evenings, resulting in ‘less density than 2022’ and the need to be careful with tannins.

‘In 2022 we had 22 days of heatwaves, in 2025 we had eight or nine and we had cooler evenings in 2025,' he said.

Ronan Laborde, owner and winemaker at Château Clinet, agreed, saying that despite, ‘six days in the summer above 40°C , the nights were barely above 20°C and the 35mm rain on 20 August ‘changed the landscape’.

Extraordinary measures

Nonetheless, teams sometimes used various and novel ways to beat the heat when the mercury rose. For example, at Château La Conseillante they applied zinc oxide to protect against harmful UVA and UVB rays during the 10–16 August heatwave.

At Société Agricole de Lafleur, water stress became critical. Rather than traditional irrigation, the team performed what it calls ‘soil water correction’ on only the highest-need plots – less than one-fifth of the vineyard surface.

They repurposed an old harvest machine to open the soil in the middle of the rows, delivered a minimal 10 litres per square metre directly into the ground (15 cm deep), then covered it again.

‘No water to the vines directly,’ Techincal Director Omri Ram explained. ‘Just the minimum necessary to keep the soils alive.’

No correction was applied at Grand Village or Les Perrières; only selected parts of Lafleur received it.

At other times, natural methods proved they still worked perfectly well too. Marie-Laure Latorre, new general manager at Château de Sales (previously at Château Jean Faure), reported ‘no problem with drought’ thanks to deep roots penetrating 2–3 metres in the clay-rich, water-retaining soils.

Harvests were early – very early at times. Château Lafleur experienced its earliest ever harvest starting with the whites on 19 August and reds on 26 August.

Noëmie Durantou Reihac, winemaker of the Durantou estates including L’Eglise Clinet, described 2025 as a ‘tip-toe vintage, walking on tightrope’ with balance between the tannins, alcohol and acidities being the hardest element to achieve.

They started the harvest on 27 August – the earliest ever – with the team, ‘having to make decisions about blending even before the vinifications’ due to such limited yields.

A counter-intuitive result

Olivier Berrouet, technical director at Château Petrus, was pleased with the final result: ‘What impressed us was the gap between what happened during the season and what we could have expected and what’s in the glass.

'It’s the real strength of the clay – the wines don’t carry the wounds of the vintage’.

In terms of style, he said it’s a ‘powerful Petrus’ where the goal was to ‘control the tannic power and to not allow the structure to dominate the aromatic intensity’.

Jean-Baptiste Bourotte owner of Château Clos du Clocher calls 2025 a, ‘counter-intuitive / paradoxical vintage because of the weather and the surprising resulting style’.

Christian Moueix, president of the négociant house Établissements Jean-Pierre Moueix and owner of family properties that include Châteaux Bélair-Monange, La Fleur-Pétrus and Trotanoy described the vintage as ‘saved by the rain’ and something ‘miraculous’ and ultimately calling it, ‘a good to very good vintage’.

What's new

One of the most striking and widely discussed moves of the vintage came from Société Agricole de Lafleur in Pomerol.

The estate took the significant step of designating all six of its wines as Vin de France, stepping away from Pomerol AOC rules.

This decision reflects both a philosophical commitment to flexibility in the face of climate extremes and a desire for greater freedom in winemaking and labelling.

The guiding philosophy was clearly explained by Techincal Director, Omri Ram.

He said: ‘Soils [are the] number one victim of climate change – we just don’t see it. We try to mitigate the extreme moments of the year.’

The result, according to Ram, was an ‘amazing vintage’ with record-early picking dates (whites harvested 19 August, reds 26 August) and yields of 35hl/ha.

The full 2025 range under Vin de France is:

Lafleur 2025 Vin de France Rouge

Les Pensées 2025 Vin de France Rouge

Les Perrières 2025 Vin de France Rouge

Les Champs Libres 2025 Vin de France Blanc

Le Grand Village Rouge 2025 Vin de France Rouge

Le Grand Village Blanc 2025 Vin de France Blanc

Elsewhere, Domaines Jacques Thienpont (Le Pin, L’IF, L’Hêtre): It was announced during the Primeurs that Vianney Gravereaux (ex-Ornellaia/Masseto) has joined as managing director with Diana Berrouet Garcia promoted to chief winemaker and estates manager. Jacques Thienpont will gradually step back while remaining involved.

Château de Sales: Marie-Laure Latorre (agricultural engineer and oenologist) was appointed general director in September 2025 arriving from Château Jean Faure in St-Émilion where she handled technical, commercial and large-scale restructuring projects

Further reading from this report

• St-Emilion
• Pessac-Léognan & Graves
• Dry whites
• Crus Bourgeois
• Pauillac
• St-Estèphe
• Margaux
• St-Julien
• Sauternes

Bordeaux 2025: Top wines from Pomerol

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St-Julien delivered classic poise and personality in 2025.

The appellation’s gravel soils with pockets of clay provided good drainage yet retained enough moisture through the dry summer to support even ripening, while the late-August rains and cool September nights preserved acidity and delivered the vintage’s signature freshness.

Nonetheless, yields were among the lowest ever for some estates (20–28 hl/ha range), but the resulting wines show supple tannins, vibrant colour, stony grip and excellent balance – elegant, structured and age-worthy, with the low pH/fresh acidity and fine tannins that define successful St-Julien vintages.

Sara Lecompte Cuvelier owner of Château Léoville Poyferré highlighted, ‘the unusual balance between concentration, fruit and freshness’ and noted she, ‘didn’t expect low alcohols and so much freshness’.

Mathieu Bordes director of Château Lagrange called the 2025 vintage the ‘fourth warmest ever’ with a ‘cooler September’ leading to their ‘earliest harvest ever’. and noted the smallest berries since 1984, the shortest maceration in 19 years, and a style ‘like 2009 on the attack’.

Tiny quantities

Although yields fell across Bordeaux, a striking fact about St-Julien is how many were lower even than in 2013 – a year marked by poor weather and ruined crops.

Château Langoa Barton recorded a yield of 20hl/ha – ‘worse than 2013’ – with maturation blocked by lack of water until the August rain.

Sister property, Château Léoville Barton, which this year celebrates 200 years of Barton family ownership, likewise produced a yield of 22hl/ha, ‘one of the lowest ever’. Even the poor 2013 vintage conditions produced a yield of 27hl/ha.

Jean-Michel Laporte at Château Talbot reported a yield of 28.3hl/ha – ‘one of the lowest since 2013’.

Part of the issue was berry size, as noted by Mathieu Bordes. At Château Ducru-Beaucaillou recorded grape weights were as low as 0.6-0.8g for Cabernet Sauvignon (in a good year 1.1-1.3g) and 0.8g-1.1g for Merlot (in a good year 1.4-1.6g).

Making wine like it's 1989

Despite a lack of quantity, Jean-Michel Laporte added more hopefully that 2025, ‘could be a year full of great bargains’.

François-Xavier Maroteaux, owner of Château Branaire-Ducru, and president of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux (UGCB) described the vintage as, ‘a nice ambassador for Bordeaux – a great vintage’ that ‘will be nice for people to drink early if they want to’.

He said it has ‘impressive fragrance’ and a style where, ‘concentration could have given something similar to 2022 but finally the alcohol is not the same and the style of the tannins and freshness is more similar to 2020’.

Nicolas Sinoquet, president director general of Château Gruaud Larose said they had made ‘the wines we like, fresh and silky’.

‘The vines seem to have found the right balance this year,’ he said.

'When you pick at the right time, the wines will be as they should be’ he said, adding that the 2025 style reminds him of 1989 – ‘a wine I love a lot’.

Anniversaries

The 2025 vintage coincided with impressive milestones. Château Gruaud Larose celebrated its 300th vintage and the Barton family reached 200 years at Château Léoville Barton.

Further reading from this report

• Pomerol
• St-Emilion
• Pessac-Léognan & Graves
• Dry whites
• Crus Bourgeois
• Pauillac
• St-Estèphe
• Margaux
• Sauternes

Bordeaux 2025: Top wines from St-Julien

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Margaux produced one of the most elegant and surprising expressions of the vintage, with varying styles dependant on harvest and vinification decisions.

While June was exceptionally dry during cell multiplication and multiple days exceeded 40°C, the lighter late-August/early-September rains (around 60 mm) arrived at precisely the right moment.

These showers eased stress, moderating sugars without dilution, and delivering the 'miracle' freshness that turned potential 2022-style opulence into something far more classical.

The result is wines with ripe but non-heavy tannins, unique floral expression, juicy yet precise fruit, and a supple, silky texture framed by tension, energy and minerality.

Thomas Duroux, technical director at Château Palmer, explained that the rains brought the three elements of ripeness together perfectly.

These wines are less 'solar' or exuberant than 2022, more classical and fresh (close to 2016 in many winemakers’ minds), with the concentration and density of warmer years but far greater drinkability and subtlety.

Axel Heinz technical director at Château Lascombes was surprised by the freshness and precision: ‘We have power, richness and density but framed by freshness and crisp and vibrant aromatics’.

The resulting wines are a real, ‘surprise from such an extreme year – these are still unmistakably Bordeaux. In the past we’d have a cold growing season saved by an Indian summer but this year we had a cooler and rainier end to the season which stopped it being so solar and exuberant.’

Unforeseen fermentations

Small berries were universal (‘as small as 2022’). For Château Margaux, 2025 will represent the smallest volume of grand vin production since 1856 with only 37% of the total yield of 22hl/ha going into the top wine.

Château Siran recorded its smallest yield without hail or frost at 32 hl/ha, and Château Brane-Cantenac's owner, Henri Lurton, reported the Margaux average yield of 28hl/ha with very small berries (Merlot down 30%, Cabernet 15%).

Winemakers also emphasised the need for adaptive, thoughtful vinification.

Philippe Bascaules, technical director at Château Margaux, called it a ‘great vintage’ that required more precise decisions on temperature, maceration and length than 2018 or 2022.

‘The vinifications were uneven – not as good as 2018 or 2022 in terms of homogeneity. We saw that when we the grapes entered into the vats, some had alcohol levels less than 13% ABV and others at 15.5% which meant we had to really adapt the vinifying conditions. Some tanks took 12 days and 28 days for others – we’ve never seen that before in the cellar.’

Château Giscours had already used cover crops and a lowered canopy to retain water in the heat, and was then also able to put it new thermo-regulated cellar for cold maceration to use for the first time this year.

The 'miracle' vintage

During our tasting, Château Rauzan-Ségla’s director of development, Axelle Araud, highlighted the wine's unique floral expression, and a perfect marriage of 2022 ripeness with 2016 energy and tension.

Henri Lurton called the style ‘close to 2016 which was really fresh… less alcohol than 2022’.

Gonzague Lurton owner of Château Durfort-Vivens called it a ‘miracle year’ and remarked on the ageing ability with ripeness, lots of tannins and high acidity.

At Château Marquis d’Alesme, Aymone Fabre, said he and his team found, ‘more complexity in the wine than 2023 – it’s the same kind of modern style in terms of keeping the freshness but also there’s something really drinkable about these wines’.

Daisy Sichel at Château Angludet described it as, ‘a really good drinking vintage. It’s one you can drink young and find pleasure with but also keep for 30 years. There’s matter and silkiness, and tension, but subtle’.

Anniversaries

Château Giscours marked 30 years under the ownership of the Albada Jelgersma family and with general manager Alexander van Beek at the helm.

Château Margaux completed its final year of organic conversion (certification expected 2026).

The Lurton family marked 100 years at Château Brane-Cantenac

Further reading from this report

• Pomerol
• St-Emilion
• Pessac-Léognan & Graves
• Dry whites
• Crus Bourgeois
• Pauillac
• St-Estèphe
• St-Julien
• Sauternes

Bordeaux 2025: Top wines from Margaux

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Pauillac stood out as one of the most classically powerful yet refined appellations of the vintage.

Its deep gravel soils, which can be unforgiving in pure drought years, benefited enormously from the heavier late-August rains in the northern Médoc (70mm fell at Mouton, 20mm more than normal) and the cool summer nights.

Jean-Emmanuel Danjoy, technical director at Château Mouton Rothschild, explained: ‘It was the earliest water deficit we’ve ever registered here at veraison but the vines didn’t appear to be stressed. In June 2022 we had 115mm of rain at the end of the month, in June 2025 we had 60mm.

'But unlike 2022 where we could see some stress on the leaves, leaf loss and the beginning of dehydration, we didn’t see any of that in 2025. Because of the early deficit the berries grew with the water restriction.’

The late rain arrived at exactly the right moment, easing water stress, moderating sugars without dilution, preserving acidity and allowing perfect phenolic ripeness.

Pierre Montegut technical director at AXA Millésime's estates explained how dryness delivered concentration while the early-September rain was ‘wonderful for the Cabernets’ at Pichon Baron, producing ‘more fruit, more freshness and more elegance’ than 2022.

Frédéric Casteja at Château Batailley called it, ‘quite an amazing vintage’ and one where ‘we had time to wait until each grape variety was ripe’.

The result is classically structured, mineral-driven Pauillac wines with intense colour, graphite, wet stone and liquorice notes, but delivered with unusual freshness, lower alcohols (mostly 12.5–13.5%) and a transparency that can be described as ‘hands-off’ and ‘terroir-led’.

High Cabernet percentages (98% at Mouton the highest ever in the blend) and precise winemaking amplified the precision and energy.

The wines are typically less dense than 2022, they don’t carry the same muscular structures and yet many of the IPT levels are just as high but with lower pHs giving a feeling of intense freshness, coolness and perhaps more streamlined at this point.

Game-changer

Winemakers were unanimous that the late rain completely changed the profile from what was expected at the end of August.

Eric Kohler technical director at Château Lafite Rothschild called it, ‘a vintage of happiness… a symphony of all the perfect parameters’, noting a yield of 27hl/ha and a style ‘closer to 2020 but perhaps more delicate’.

Nicolas Glumineau technical director at Château Pichon Comtesse stressed the dramatic contrast in rainfall, noting that 70mm fell between May-July 2025 while it was 280mm in May-July 2024.

Château Pedesclaux’s director, Christophe Congé, noted the north half of the appellation’s extra rain as an added benefit and one reason behind the unusually low alcohol levels of only 12.5% ‘with such mature tannins’.

As in other appellations, it was an early start for pickers, and the earliest harvest ever at Pichon Comtesse (young Merlots were picked from 28 August)

Meanwhile, the Mouton team finished the harvest on the 20 September, the earliest ever and just one day after Château Margaux started to pick its Cabernets.

Abundant aromas

Winemakers continually mentioned the aromatic intensity and profile of the 2025 wines in their descriptions and comparisons.

Nicolas Glumineau described an, ‘aromatic complexity close to 2020'.

Mathieu Bessonnet, technical director at Château Pontet-Canet said the wine style was ‘like 2023 with aromatics and brightness but a higher quality of tannins’.

Emeline Borie at Grand Puy Lacoste and Hélène Genin, technical director at Château Latour, both emphasised the freshness and abundant aromas.

For Danjoy, 2025, ‘brings us back to “classic” weight, balance and fruit expression.'

It's 'a very complete vintage like 2010, 2016 and 2020,' agreed Glumineau, while Genin said it had, 'the power of 2016 but the elegance and quality of tannins as 2020’.

AXA Millèsimes' managing director, Christian Seeley, summed it up as: ‘The charm of a solar vintage but with the advantages of freshness and slightly lower alcohols… that’s what everyone wants’.

Recent changes

In a personnel change at the group, long-time general manager of Pichon Baron, Corinne Illic, will head to the United States in July 2026 as general manager of AXA’s American properties; Outpost Wines on Howell Mountain and Platt Vineyard in Sonoma.

For the Jacky Lorenzetti-owned properties, nephew Félix Pariente Lorenzetti expanded his role significantly.

Already presiding over Châteaux Pédesclaux (Pauillac) and Lafon-Rochet (St-Estèphe) since July 2025, he is now also director of the family’s fine-wine trading subsidiary LD Vins (the Grands Crus Classés specialist négoce founded by Thierry Decré and Frédéric de Luze).

At co-owned Château d’Issan (Margaux), Edgard Kappelhoff Lançon joined to head commercial and marketing after Augustin Lacaille’s departure to Pape Clément.

Internal technical-director swaps included Vincent Bache-Gabrielsen (now at Lafon-Rochet & Lilian Ladouys) and ex-Lafite’s Christophe Congé at Pédesclaux.

Coming soon

Château Lafite Rothschild (Pauillac, 1st Growth) made its last vintage in the historic cellar before transitioning to a major new stone winery due in time for the 2026 vintage (a 4,500m² extension + 6,000m² renovation by Bernard Quirot and Atelier EGR).

Further reading from this report

• Pomerol
• St-Emilion
• Pessac-Léognan & Graves
• Dry whites
• Crus Bourgeois
• St-Estèphe
• Margaux
• St-Julien
• Sauternes

Bordeaux 2025: Top wines from Pauillac

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Pessac-Léognan and Graves produced wines of striking purity and mineral precision, but the vintage exposed clear differences across the appellation’s patchwork of terroirs – both for styles and yields.

However, Fabien Teitgen at Château Smith Haut Lafitte described 2025 as the third warmest year after 2022 and 2023 but with, ‘more rain in 2025 than 2022’ and cooler minimum temperatures.

Gravel-dominant sites, while well-drained, were more vulnerable to the prolonged summer drought and recorded tighter, lower-yielding crops.

Meanwhile, estates with deeper clay or limestone influence benefited from better water retention and cooler night-time temperatures, delivering more balanced, vibrant wines with fresher acidity and refined tannins.

Despite the, at times intense, heat, Jean-Jacques Bonnie owner of Château Malartic-Lagravière observed that the vineyard, ‘didn’t look like it was feeling the stress… [we] didn’t have the long and tiring heat like in 2022’.

As elsewhere in the region, the late-August rains (lighter here than in the northern Médoc but still transformative) eased hydric stress without causing dilution, while early harvesting for white wines preserved exceptional aromatics and acidity.

The overall result is elegant, terroir-transparent wines – cool fruit, wet-stone and graphite minerality, with Cabernet freshness balancing Merlot roundness – emphasising vibrancy, texture and energy rather than sheer power or opulence.

Many winemakers noted a successful marriage of 2010/2016 structure with 2022 ripeness but without the heat or heaviness, though the vintage required careful extraction and sorting to manage thick, drought-stressed skins.

A paradox vintage

As always, temperature extremes call for more attention in the cellar.

At Château Pape Clément winemaker Matt Turner focused on, ‘texture and energy and vibrancy rather than just power’, using optical sorting and careful extraction on thick drought-stressed skins.

Turner was joined by Pablo Laborde (formerly of Penfolds/Treasury Wine Estates), who as group director in early 2026, overseeing blending and ageing across the portfolio – including a major refocus at Château Pape Clément on its historic heart plots in Pessac (fruit from Martillac is now directed to the second wine, Clémentin)

There were many comparisons to 2022 as well, but with some nuance.

Guillaume Alexandre Marx, commercial director for Domaine Clarence Dillon, the owner of Château Haut-Brion, Château La Mission Haut-Brion, and Château Quintus said: ‘For us 2025 is really in the style 2010, 2016 and 2022 – a combination of the three. We have fruit ripeness and a lot of freshness.’

However, Guillaume Pouthier director of Château Les Carmes Haut-Brion called 2025, ‘a paradox vintage – warm and dry with lots of tannins,’ but ‘there’s less volume in the mouth because of less alcohol and less glycerol’.

He said there, ‘is the same energy as 2022 but the balance is different’.

What's new

In one of the year’s biggest transitions, 90-year-old Bernard Magrez has just handed over leadership of his extensive estate group to his son Philippe Magrez (who has long overseen commercial and export strategy).

Pablo Laborde (formerly of Penfolds/Treasury Wine Estates) joined as group director in early 2026, overseeing blending and ageing across the portfolio – including a major refocus at Château Pape Clément on its historic heart plots in Pessac (Martillac fruit now directed to the second wine, Clémentin).

Smith Haut Lafitte (Pessac-Léognan): Tracey Dobbin MW joined the Executive Board for international strategy earlier this year while Florence Cathiard stepped into a co-chair role alongside her children Mathilde and Alice.

The 2025 vintage was the last for the late Daniel Cathiard who passed away in January 2026 with a special commemorative label already in place for the primeur sample bottles.

Maison Dourthe (owner of Châteaux Belgrave, La Garde, Le Boscq, etc.): Pénélope Godefroy (ex-Artémis Domaines) took over as CEO/Managing Director in May 2025, focusing on international growth.

Coming soon

Château Haut-Brion (Pessac-Léognan, 1st Growth) has its striking Annabelle Selldorf-designed, carbon-neutral winery complex (built with rammed earth using estate soils) nearing completion.

The project includes production areas, a museum/library, and research centre. It opens to visitors in January 2027, so the 2025 wines were made in the existing setup – but this remains a defining milestone for the estate.

Further reading from this report

• Pomerol
• St-Emilion
• Dry whites
• Crus Bourgeois
• Pauillac
• St-Estèphe
• Margaux
• St-Julien
• Sauternes

Bordeaux 2025: Top wines from Pessac & Graves

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St-Estèphe’s clay and gravel mix that defines much of the area proved a major advantage in 2025.

It retained just enough moisture through the intense dry summer to avoid the extreme stress seen on pure gravel sites further south, while the late-August rains (heavier in the northern Médoc) allowed perfect completion of ripening without dilution or overripeness.

Château Cos d’Estournel noted that: ‘70mm of rain at the end of August helped avoid high sugar content and finish ripening of the skins.’

The result is wines with classical St-Estèphe power and structure, but delivered with unusual freshness, lower alcohols (mostly 12.7–13.6%), powdery/chalky tannins and a cool, mineral-driven precision that shows real terroir-transparency.

Overall, the heavier clay soils and extra northern rain delivered the vintage’s signature combination of concentration and lift better than many gravel-dominant neighbours.

This was not the showy, high-octane style some feared after the heat; instead, it is refined, energetic and age-worthy – a vintage where the best estates turned the blending challenge (‘more tannins, less acidity and alcohol’) into an elegant success.

Acceptable yields and early starts

Yields were low but not catastrophic compared with Pomerol (25.9hl/ha) or St-Julien (26.4hl/ha).

Indeed, several estates, like Château Pedesclaux, achieved a relatively generous yield of 41hl/ha thanks to clay's water retention and precise, intra-plot selection.

Pickers were called out early – 3 September at Château Cos d’Estournel, breaking a record set only as recently as 2022. The 2025 vintage was the final year of their organic conversion (certification expected 2026).

It was a little more stop-start at Château Montrose, where the team extended picking to 16 days (normally 11–13) to wait for each terroir and grape variety to be properly ripe.

One of a kind

Winemakers emphasised the importance of balance in what Vincent Millet, technical director at Château Calon Ségur, called a ‘one of a kind vintage'.

He said: 'The key was to get the right balance between power and elegance… we find the tannins of 2005, 2010, 2015 – all great vintages’,

The estate celebrated the first vintage in its brand-new cellar, equipped with smaller vats (10 hl, 25 hl, 34 hl, and one 73 hl) for even greater selection across its key plots.

Winemaking techniques were key in this appellation, which has a reputation for tough and grippy tannins.

Fabrice Bacquey, cellar master at Château Phelan Ségur described how he and his team conducted a short maceration (average 24 days for Merlot and 25 for Cabernet, whereas the minimum time is usually around 26 days) aiming for a style with ‘tannin finesse, balance and freshness like 2020’.

Montrose likewise changed its extraction by stopping mid-alcoholic fermentation for the first time after shortening the average maceration to 18 days (some vats at 15 days).

Montrose's team described the 2025s as sitting, ‘between 2016 and 2020 where you get concentration without the level of alcohol. Not so easy to get both'.

Château Ormes de Pez's new white (first vintage of planted Sauvignon and Sémillon inside St-Estèphe) marked another step in the appellation’s white-wine development.

Further reading from this report

• Pomerol
• St-Emilion
• Pessac-Léognan & Graves
• Dry whites
• Crus Bourgeois
• Pauillac
• Margaux
• St-Julien
• Sauternes

Bordeaux 2025: Top wines from St-Estèphe

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‘Paradoxical’ and ‘miraculous’ are just two of the many words that can be used to describe the 2025 vintage in Bordeaux.

They join ‘small’, ‘classic’, ‘modern’ or even ‘post-modern’, ‘fresh’ and ‘drinkable’. And that’s across all styles where there are some excellent and exciting reds, whites and sweet wines.

Let’s begin with paradoxical – firstly because this was a year of extremes that somehow produced wines of balance and poise rather than the heavy, opulent, high-alcohol style many expected after such a hot and dry summer – indeed the third hottest in the last 30 years alongside 2003 and 2022.

And miraculous because the ‘magical’ late-August rains (60-90mm across the region) replenished soils with much-needed water after almost three months of drought and completely reshaped the outcome.

While the vintage certainly carries comparisons to 2022 due to the extreme weather, the results in the glass are entirely different.

The 2025 vintage experienced cooler nights and harvest conditions as well as rainfall at different times. There was hydric stress in both vintages but not the same accumulation of sugar and alcohol.

While there’s plenty to celebrate in 2025, and some truly exceptional wines on offer, the picture isn’t as complete as 2022 where the weather homogenised the wines to the extent that pretty much everyone made a good wine.

Further vintage comparisons seem futile with the best wines carrying elements of all the top years – the structure of 2016, poise of 2019, freshness of 2020, depth of 2022 and charm of 2023.

It really sits in a league and style of its own. At the top it’s extraordinary but there are pitfalls and not every wine was a success – it’s not a year to buy blind.

Terroir and winemaking

Terroir played a large part with unavoidable hydric stress on vines too young or too old as well as in the most well-drained sites.

Harvest dates and picking decisions were critical as were cellar decisions on fermentation lengths and temperatures as well as maceration and extraction levels.

Thick skins and high levels of anthocyanin ensured winemakers worked more delicately in the cellars to avoid over extraction or harsh tannins, they will also dictate the length of ageing and percentage in new oak.

As one winemaker put it: ‘It would have been easy to have made a monster in 2025.'

Looking back at the growing season

Early in the season, the narrative pointed firmly towards another 2022: historic heat, drought, tiny berries and the earliest harvest on record.

Yet the wines in barrel tell a far more nuanced, balanced and interesting story.

These are concentrated, aromatically pure, vibrantly coloured reds with powdery, chalky tannins, cool blue and red fruit, saline minerality – with the phenolic density and structure of a warm vintage, but none of the opulence or heaviness.

On the whole tannins are high and come across as either ‘chewy’ or more ‘structured and dense’, some up to 90IPT and around the level of the 2010s but acidities are also extremely high with low pHs.

This is fine where there’s ripe fruit and softness but wines can become angular and sharp, even with a citric / lemony citrus aspect to the acidity if the maturity wasn’t perfect.

Expect vivid and vibrant colours to the wines with intense and expressive aromatics - particularly from ripe Cabernets.

It’s inevitable that there are differences in style across the region, as there should be, and this is definitely a year where terroir shines through, but producers also faced the realities of quick decision making and allowing a ‘hands off’ approach in the winery.

There’s also a question of yields with many simply having less choice and fewer grapes to work with.

As one winemaker put it: ‘We had to make decisions about blending as we picked in the vineyard just to fill the tanks.'

Alcohols sit comfortably between 12.5% and 13.6% for the vast majority (from one to two degrees lower than 2022 and other ‘great’ vintages like 2020 and 2018), pH levels are low (frequently 3.3–3.7), and acidity drives a mouthwatering freshness that makes the wines almost ready to drink.

As Olivier Berrouet, winemaker at Petrus reflected: ‘What impressed us was the gap between what happened during the season and what we could have expected, and what’s in the glass. The wines don’t carry the wounds of the vintage’.

As Château Quintus pointed out, ‘without the rains we would have made syrup’.

The five prerequisites for a great vintage

I’ve already written about the weather conditions throughout the growing season, as well as five key takeaways from the vintage however it’s still worth noting that 2025 fulfilled – and in many ways exceeded – all five of the classic ISVV (Bordeaux School of Oenology) preconditions for a great red vintage, something that has happened only twice since 2021.

The growing season delivered quick and even flowering and fruit set thanks in part to heavy rains during Easter weekend in April that replenished the water tables.

Dry and warm late-spring/early-summer conditions caused gradual hydric stress that stopped vegetative growth before véraison, there was continued photosynthesis right up to harvest, and mostly dry, moderate conditions during picking itself.

There was also a sixth bonus: almost no losses from frost, hail or mildew, something that has plagued Bordeaux in recent years and is often the cause of such low yields.

Flowering was abundant and regular in mid-May. Fruit set in June was more difficult due to some rain and cooler temperatures, particularly for the Cabernets, but the overall result was still successful.

A dry July and August then induced the crucial water stress that slowed and eventually halted vine growth before colour change, although a little late in some cases given how early the season was.

The pivotal late-August rains (50–70mm or more in many places, up to 90mm in parts) arrived at exactly the right moment, swelling berries slightly, moderating sugars and preserving freshness without causing dilution on the best-drained terroirs.

Good weather continued into September with cool nights and helpful rain at key moments, allowing almost all varieties to reach full ripeness under ideal conditions.

Harvests took place largely under dry conditions, with dry whites from mid-August, Merlot from the end of August, and Cabernet in mid-to-late September – one of the earliest on record.

What the winemakers say

Yet the wines don’t taste like it.

‘Until mid-August we were on track for another 2022,’ Thomas Duroux at Palmer told me.

‘Then with the rains the three ripenesses came together - technological, phenolic and aromatic.’

Axel Heinz at Lascombes echoed the surprise: 'It’s surprised everyone because the wines are not exactly what we thought they were going to be before the summer finished.

'Unlike many years where we see a cold season saved by an Indian summer, this year we had a cooler and rainier end to the season which stopped it being so solar and exuberant. There’s power, richness and density but framed by freshness and crisp and vibrant aromatics.'

Philippe Bascaules at Château Margaux summed it up neatly: ‘It’s definitely not a solar vintage, much more classical and fresh with the concentration and density of the 2022, energy, vivacity and tension and balance of 2016.’

The team waited until after late September rains (longer than many) to harvest the Cabernets and have produced a brilliant, if atypical style for the vintage.

The result in the glass is concentration without heaviness. The berries were tiny – many estates described them as the smallest since 2022 or even earlier – giving high skin-to-juice ratios and beautiful natural intensity.

Weight wise they were less than 1g – commonly 0.6-0.8g for the Cabernets and 0.8-1.1g for Merlot.

‘It wasn’t a year that favoured one grape over another’ explained one winemaker ,with both grapes ripening at roughly the same time in places.

Tannins are ripe and refined rather than green or aggressive, and the fruit is cool and vibrant rather than jammy.

pH levels on the reds are often pleasingly low (many sitting in the 3.6–3.8 range), and you get that lovely combination of power and tension.

In the Médoc and Graves the Cabernet Sauvignon often showed the vintage’s classic side - tight, focused and mineral, with ripe but refined tannins.

Pierre Montégut at Château Pichon Baron described it as ‘like 2022 for richness and opulence but also like the more classic style and powerful tannins from 2018 – and for size of the berries. At the end we have more fruit, more freshness and more elegance.’

On the Right Bank the picture was similar but with its own character.

Nicolas Audebert at Châteaux Canon and Berliquet said the wines had ‘balance between freshness and maturity with energy, intensity, concentration, density.

'Everything in the same wine. You are expecting something riper, more fat, heavy, but it’s fresh and vibrant.’

Dry whites and sweet wines

Dry whites were successful if still mixed. Many estates reported aromatic intensity and lively acidity despite the earliness, with pH values often around 3.1.

It’s a good but not necessarily great year for the dry whites but there are plenty of new cuvées to get excited about as well as a cohort of wines joining the newly established Médoc Blanc AC.

Sweet wines in Sauternes and Barsac also benefited hugely from the clean noble rot that followed the late rain, producing concentrated yet vibrant wines with high sugar levels (often 145-158 g/l+) but retaining excellent freshness.

Winemaking choices

Winemaking this year required real precision and restraint. With such small berries and high skin-to-juice ratios, several estates shortened macerations and extracted more gently.

Fabrice at Phelan Ségur told me it was the shortest maceration they’ve ever done – averaging 24 days for Merlot and 25 for Cabernet instead of the usual minimum of 26 days.

Château Montrose stopped extracting mid-alcoholic fermentation in some vats, averaging only 18 days instead of 21.

Many producers mentioned using optical sorters more aggressively and paying extra attention to plot-by-plot selection to either cut sun-damaged grapes in advance of the harvest or remove the grapes to avoid overripe or dried fruit flavours.

At Château Lagrange, winemaker Matthieu Bordes noted there had been time to adapt: ‘We did the shortest maceration in 19 years with a maximum 21 days and minimum 15 days.’

The low alcohols and high tannin levels forced careful decisions in the cellar. ‘We’re in Bordeaux, we still need to have tannins and density,’ Guillaume Pouthier at Château Les Carmes Haut-Brion said.

‘We have the same energy as 2022 but the balance is different – it’s how you manage this [that is important].’

Yields and economic reality

This is the fifth consecutive small crop, and 2025 has taken it even further.

The Gironde produced roughly 290 million litres – the smallest harvest since 1991 and about half the volume of 2016.

Many classed-growth estates reported yields of 25-35 hl/ha, with some white plots even lower.

Château Margaux recorded its lowest grand vin production since 1856 at 22hl/ha while Château Cheval Blanc received 20hl/ha onto the sorting table and only 15hl/ha into the vats.

Pomerol and St-Julien were hit particularly hard at 25.9hl/ha and 26.4hl/ha – decreases of 29.2% and 27.3% respectively on the 10 year average.

In a region that can comfortably make great wines at 50hl/ha these numbers are stark, even for Margaux (28.8hl/ha) and Pauillac (30.2%).

The low fruit set was partly a hangover from 2024’s difficult flowering, made worse by the dry summer.

Add in the ongoing reduction in vineyard area (the Bordeaux vineyard is now down to around 86,000 ha) and one can understand why there is simply not very much wine this year.

From a purely economic point of view this is tough for many growers with several expressing minimum yields closer to 40hl/ha to break even or remain economy viable to continue business.

But quality-wise there’s no doubt 2025 has pockets of greatness. The best wines have real class – elegant, age-worthy and full of personality.

It will be fascinating to see how the campaign unfolds.

Market context

The first major release – Pontet-Canet, traditionally one of the earliest – came out at a modest +4% on its 2024 price.

That small increase, in a vintage of genuine scarcity and high quality, is being watched closely as an early signal of pricing discipline.

Liv-ex data shows the broader fine wine market has stabilised after years of correction, with the bid-to-offer ratio finally turning positive for the first time in three years.

Whether that translates into stronger en primeur demand will depend on whether producers, merchants and customers all play their part in moving good wine to where it will be enjoyed.

Methodology

For this report, I made 82 individual estate visits, a tasting of all the Union des Grand Crus de Bordeaux châteaux, two consultant tastings and two négociant tastings.

There is additional reporting and tasting from Panos Kakaviatos, a long-time Bordeaux writer for Decanter who covered the St-Emilion Grand Cru Classé and dry whites, and Valeria Tension, a St-Emilion resident and current MW student who covered the Cru Bourgeois wines.

In total just over 800 wines were reviewed and scored.

Further reading from this report

• Pomerol
• St-Emilion
• Pessac-Léognan & Graves
• Dry whites
• Crus Bourgeois
• Pauillac
• St-Estèphe
• Margaux
• St-Julien
• Sauternes

Bordeaux 2025: The vintage's top wines

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What makes value so central to enjoying wine? I once opened a bottle of Petrus for my father, and at his request no less.

Yet, he broke the silence with: ‘Excellent, but it’s not very good value, is it?’

In contrast to that, there’s something inescapably appealing about a wine that grabs your attention, that provokes thought and stimulates conversation – all while leaving you with the feeling that you got more than you paid for. A value wine.

By virtue of that feeling, value wines tend to be drunk more often and are, I think, better understood as a result.

I’ve always loved the late Michael Broadbent’s tasting notes, referencing his numerous encounters with a particular wine in all sorts of settings over the years.

For most passionate amateurs, it’s the value wines – the great wines we don’t feel shy about opening – that we get to know with that sort of intimacy. They keep us coming back, vintage after vintage.

Value Bordeaux wines have never been so widely available, and the 1855 Grand Cru Classé estates have led the way.

More vintages per decade, and more châteaux per appellation, excel now than ever before, with value for money often hiding in plain sight on the secondary market and (as unfashionable as it may be to say at the moment) even en primeur.

Here is my selection of 10. Others that could easily be included here are featured elsewhere in this guide (for example, Batailley, Giscours, Lagrange and Langoa Barton).

Value wines are nourishing to the palate, mind and heart. Bordeaux is full of them.

Léoville Barton

St-Julien second growth

Léoville Barton just might be Bordeaux’s best-value wine. Particularly since 2015, the property’s increases in quality simply haven’t been matched by commensurate increases in price – in stark contrast to some of its peers.

Château Léoville Barton was established in 1826 following Hugh Barton’s purchase of plots of the Léoville vineyard a few years before and in 1826.

Barton had purchased the adjacent Château Langoa in 1821, so separate facilities have never been needed. The 50ha vineyard is divided into three main plots, currently planted with 77% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot and 3% Cabernet Franc.

The soil is mainly deep gravel which is purest and deepest closest to the Gironde estuary, growing sandier and shallower moving to the west. A strategy of minimal intervention in the vineyard lets the terroir do the talking and biodiversity has long been of interest.

A new winery and cellars have been in use since the 2021 vintage. Here both Léoville and Langoa Barton wines are vinified and matured.

The number of vats has doubled, allowing for the ability to pick and vinify each plot according to its own needs; in turn, the vineyard is better understood than ever before.

Work in the winery is more precise and more delicate, with pumping over and use of R-pulse decreasing as fermentation progresses, in order to avoid extracting harsh tannin (in use here since 2018, the R-pulse technique uses inert gas to stir fermenting berries, favouring a gentle extraction). This results in a broader (not shorter) drinking window.

Multi-generational excellence

What do you get for your money? Léoville Barton usually offers variations on themes of intense cassis, blackberry, pencil shavings, coals, ink, lavender and liquorice.

Powerful depth is a given; the percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon in the grand vin’s blend has usually been a little higher than its proportion in the vineyard, but it’s Léoville Barton’s paradoxically elegant rendition of that power that makes it so engaging.

The Barton Sartorius family has had a multi-generational commitment to excellence at a fair price, with value for money now better than ever.

The 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2020 can all be found in bond for £55-£60. It’s one to buy every year, with superb wines even in less glamorous vintages (such as the 2017 and 2021, each available for about £40 in bond).

Even from generally expensive vintages like 2022, prices remain reasonable at Léoville Barton – it can still be found in bond for under £60, and it is absolutely worth the small premium.

Grand-Puy-Lacoste

Pauillac fifth growth

Grand-Puy-Lacoste delivers a wine of character every year, conveying its place and vintage of origin clearly.

Quality is consistently high from this quintessential Pauillac estate, which has been shepherded by the Borie family since 1978.

Its name, Grand-Puy (roughly translated as ‘big hill’), can be a bit confusing when approaching across the plateau from Pauillac. Viewed from the west of the château, though, the abrupt 10m rise from marshy lowlands onto the plateau of Grand-Puy clarifies things.

The 60ha vineyard is planted with 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot and 5% Cabernet Franc.

Replanting is now done via massal selection (propagation from the best cuttings of a selection of existing vines) from parcels planted in the 1950s, with the influence of subterranean biodiversity on soil structure and micronutrient balance closely observed.

Between 2016 and 2018, detailed studies of the vineyard’s plots were undertaken, both to tailor viticultural practices and to better understand their trajectory of maturation across the growing season.

A new winery was completed in summer 2025, with the number of vats increased to mirror these better-defined vineyard plots, allowing for each plot to be picked at the optimal moment and vinified according to its needs.

Nowadays, most winemaking interventions are employed during the early stage of fermentation, when alcohol (a natural solvent) remains low, thus allowing for extraction with a refined tannic structure.

Mature classic

What comes of all this? One of Bordeaux’s classic wines, conveying the character of Pauillac with distinction and fresh, medium-bodied equilibrium, the wines often showing a core of cassis, blackberry and pencil shaving notes.

Both recent releases and fully mature vintages of Grand-Puy-Lacoste represent excellent value for money.

Mature classics such the 1995 and 1996 can still be purchased for around £110 in bond, while superb recent vintages such as the 2019, 2020 and 2022 are available for £35-£45 per bottle.

While exceedingly reasonable prices would be enough to recommend purchasing Grand-Puy-Lacoste en primeur, the château offers a novel format as a further incentive. A case, equivalent in volume to 12 standard bottles, but instead containing one double magnum, two magnums and four 75cl bottles.

This brilliant idea by Pierre-Antoine Borie offers the opportunity to weave Grand-Puy-Lacoste into life’s events easily – it’s perfect for those who regularly host gatherings of various sizes or who want to lay something special down for a child.

Few of these cases are released after en primeur.

Brane-Cantenac

Margaux second growth

There’s something uniquely disarming about great Margaux, with its violetty fragrance, and synthesis of intensity and delicacy.

Brane-Cantenac not only offers that Margaux archetype, but provides the best value for money in the appellation while doing it.

The 72ha vineyard is located in the Margaux commune of Cantenac. Though there are three parcels (Carabin, Le Plateau and Derrière le Parc, located on Terraces 3, 4 and 5, respectively), the crop of Le Plateau on Terrace 4 is the source of the grand vin.

Here, a half-metre of sandy gravel sits atop an admixture of 60%-70% gravel and 10%-20% clay, running several metres deep before reaching a limestone-marl substratum.

This geology confers an advantageous combination of elegance, derived from sandy gravel, and generosity of fruit, derived from the clay subsoil, which also helps to mitigate hydric stress.

I visited at harvest in September 2022 and can attest to this; despite the hot and dry conditions that had prevailed for a long period, the vineyard was in perfect health.

The overall distribution of plantings is 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot and 5% dedicated to a mix of Carmenère, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Malbec.

But it’s the 60-year-old Cabernet Sauvignon on Terrace 4 that, for the property’s fourth-generation proprietor Henri Lurton, is the core of Brane-Cantenac’s identity.

Attractive value

Since 2002, the grand vin’s blend has included more Cabernet Sauvignon than Merlot, and since 2012 it has included a markedly higher proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon than the distribution of plantings might suggest.

This went up to 84% in 2013 before settling into a reliable 70%-74% between 2015-2022 (and, specifically, 74% in the pristine 2022 that I watched come in, blended with 23% Merlot, 1% Cabernet Franc, 1% Carmenère and 1% Petit Verdot).

In Brane-Cantenac, I usually find fruit in the purple and blue spectrum accented by violet, pencil shavings and coffee beans.

In bigger vintages, it can take a little time for its charm to unfold fully, but that lovability is usually obvious earlier on in less-lauded vintages like 2021, which shouldn’t be overlooked.

Despite the improvements the estate has made over the past 20 years, prices remain very reasonable en primeur and on the secondary market.

The 2022 is available for around £75 per bottle in bond, with the 2019 and 2020 looking particularly good value to lay down at £40-£50.

The 2005 and 2010, which are entering early maturity, offer attractive value at about £100 and £120, respectively.

Branaire-Ducru

St-Julien fourth growth

It can take a long time for the market to catch on when substantive changes are made at a château, even if those changes redefine its standing among its peers.

For the past 20 years, that’s exactly what has been happening at Branaire-Ducru. General manager Jean-Dominique Videau and co-owner François-Xavier Maroteaux have been quietly crafting a wonderfully elegant rendition of southern St-Julien.

Value here has been excellent from 2005 on and the 2022 has reached a new level at Branaire-Ducru.

The property’s 61ha are strung across southern St-Julien, running from the southeast to just north of the hamlet of Beychevelle, continuing along the northern edges of Châteaux Gruaud-Larose and Lagrange, ending with plots west of Château Talbot that run into St-Laurent commune.

Temperatures between the 70 distinct parcels can differ up to 2°C and the geological range includes 15 soil types, with more sand and clay near the château, well-drained gravel on Terrace 3 farther inland and thinner gravel in the west of the appellation on clay-limestone subsoil.

This diversity of terroir confers advantages and poses challenges. The key to Branaire-Ducru’s recent success has been the ability to maximise the former and adapt to the latter.

Videau keeps a close watch on the needs and maturity of each parcel, with his constant presence in the vineyard augmented by aerial photography in late summer.

Branaire-Ducru’s vineyard comprises 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 28% Merlot, 4% Petit Verdot and 3% Cabernet Franc, though there have been changes in which grape varieties (and which clonal or massal selections) are planted where, and on which rootstocks.

Natural opulence and density

Completed in time for the 2022 harvest, Branaire-Ducru’s new gravity-fed winery houses 75 vats to allow each of the 70 plots to be picked at just the right time and vinified according to its needs.

What results from all of this? A wine of ‘natural opulence and density,’ as Videau says. This beguiling texture is just the vehicle for the mixed red, blue and black berry fruit that’s nearly always on show, inflected with a floral perfume.

Owing to its distribution of plots, Branaire-Ducru has a lot to say about southern St-Julien (it’s worth listening).

The superb 2022 is easily found in UK bond for £40 and those looking for an example that’s ready to drink will find the 2016 at a similar price. The 2005 and 2010, both drinking now, are available for around £55-£60.

Gruaud-Larose

St-Julien second growth

The renaissance of Château Gruaud-Larose remains a bit under the radar. Well remembered by many claret lovers for its monumental 1982 and 1986, the estate’s relative position among its peers declined through the 1990s and 2000s.

Over the past 15 or so years, that trajectory has changed definitively.

Almost all of the young and talented current team at Gruaud-Larose has been recruited over the past decade.

Replanting, fine-tuned vineyard work and vinification, and mitigation of the spoilage yeast brettanomyces, have led to a real revolution at the property.

Yet, prices haven’t kept up with quality. Recent vintages are attractive on the secondary market and en primeur prices are very fair.

The vineyard spans 82ha in one single block around the château, sitting at the eastern edge of Terrace 3. Soil studies in 2013 helped to characterise Gruaud-Larose’s three outcrops of gravel, which comprise about 75% of the vineyard, and the veins of clay running between them.

The current grape mix is 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 35% Merlot, with Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc making up the remainder.

One of the first investments made by Jean Merlaut, owner since 1997, was to replant several plots with varieties better suited to their geology and exposure.

By 2010, those changes were starting to pay off. Since 2018, replanting has been done with a massal selection from the property’s own vines and the proportion of Gruaud-Larose comprised by Cabernet Sauvignon will reach 80% by 2030.

Vineyard work has evolved remarkably with thought-provoking adaptations to climate change, including the use of clay-based sunscreen for the grapes and retention of cover crops during the growing season, following recognition that they can reduce radiant heat around the clusters by up to 7°C.

Quality-aligned changes

The team feels that the château’s organic certification in 2022 has helped to revitalise the vineyard ecosystem and to focus closer attention on everything that happens within.

Yields are now at a more quality-aligned 35-40hl/ha compared with 50-60hl/ha 25 years ago.

Lower fermentation temperatures (usually 25°C-26°C, from up to 34°C during the 1980s-2000s) and more tailored extraction have helped to refine Gruaud’s power.

Brettanomyces has been greatly mitigated by eliminating colonies in the cellar, close monitoring during maturation, and via co-inoculation, a process of simultaneously adding the yeast and bacteria which facilitate the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations, respectively (if performed consecutively, brettanomyces can proliferate during the interval between them).

This is a cool, classic, thrillingly powerful expression of St-Julien, tempered by good manners.

The 2020 and 2022, arguably the best Gruauds since 1986, can be found for £60-£70 in bond, with the excellent 2010 no more expensive.

La Lagune

Haut-Médoc third growth

Viticulture dates back to the latter half of the 16th century at La Lagune, one of the oldest vineyards in the Médoc.

The name refers to the 80ha property’s 15 springs and a 34ha marsh adjacent to the vineyard reinforces the point.

This is the southernmost of the 1855 Médoc Grand Cru Classé properties, located between the city of Bordeaux and the Margaux appellation just to its north.

Since 2000, the château has been owned by the Frey family, who are also the proprietors of Domaine de la Chapelle in Hermitage.

The property is 110ha in total with most of its plots around the château. An outcrop of deep gravel cuts through the centre of the vineyard, bordered on both sides by sandy gravel transitioning to gravel 1m-2m above the water table. Another parcel close by contains compact gravel and sandy soils. T

he distribution of plantings corresponds to this, with 60% Cabernet Sauvignon planted on the gravelliest areas, 30% Merlot on sandy gravels and 10% Petit Verdot on a cross-section of the two.

Small plots of Cabernet Franc, Castet, Malbec, Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc can also be found.

Bespoke tailoring

A massal selection was started in the mid-2010s for the property’s Petit Verdot, a project which has now extended to the other two principal varieties.

Organic certification in 2016 was quickly followed by biodynamic certification in 2021.

The winery has benefited from the Frey family’s investments, with vats tailored in number and size to the plots to be accommodated. Maturation is relatively short for a Grand Cru Classé, lasting 12-14 months in 50% new oak.

I’ve had good experiences with La Lagune as old as the 1970, tasted in 2018. Usually showing dark red fruit, mineral and leather, it’s a wine that’s easy to like.

Pertinent to this list, it’s a wine that’s also easy to afford. The 2019, which I thought represented excellent value when I tasted it at the Union des Grands Crus tasting in 2022, is widely available in UK bond for around £35.

Even older vintages from 1982-1990 can often be found priced at less than £100 and, though I have not tasted it in a decade, the 1986 then seemed like it had a long life ahead.

Talbot

St-Julien fourth growth

Vintages such as the 1982, 1985 and 1986 made Talbot a favourite for many Bordeaux lovers, with their characterfully St-Julien notes rendered in a satisfyingly fleshy and fragrant, yet often rustic, frame.

Quality softened through the 1990s-2010s – the wines didn’t have their old density or vim – but since 2015 things have been on the right track, particularly since the arrival of general manager Jean-Michel Laporte in 2018.

I’ve been hugely impressed with Talbots between 1924-1961, and I think that Laporte has his sights set on that level of quality.

The trajectory of the wines made under his aegis has certainly suggested that he’s capable of fulfilling his ambitions for the property.

Talbot’s vineyard comprises 110ha in a single block in northwestern St-Julien, 94ha of which are planted with vines.

Sitting on the western edge of Terrace 3, mainly comprised of gravel 50-70cm deep over clay and sandstone, the vineyard is planted to 68% Cabernet Sauvignon, 28% Merlot and 4% Petit Verdot.

A programme of replanting began in 2007, with vines now grafted to 101-14 and occasionally 3309 rootstocks, replacing the higher-yielding, drought-susceptible SO4 rootstock, which was once so common to the region.

Modulating the leaf surface area (beyond canopy height alone) has helped to optimise ripeness.

Talbot terroir

In the winery, the extraction strategy has shifted toward a lighter touch to avoid coarse tannins.

Talbot is free of brettanomyces’ influence nowadays, owing to a combination of co-inoculation and, on occasion, reverse osmosis during maturation if the brett-attuned nose of cellar master Jean-Max Drouilhet detects it.

This has allowed the current team’s wonderful work, and Talbot’s terroir, to shine through unobscured.

Since 2016, I’ve found Talbot full of reliably lush yet fresh fruit, delicately spicy, subtly minty, inflected by unsmoked tobacco, sometimes with exotic wood accents.

It’s a wonderful era for the property and it would be wise to capitalise on this iconic St-Julien while prices remain favourable.

Vintages since 2018 are widely available in UK bond for £35-£45 per bottle. This offers excellent value as these will drink well reasonably young, though they possess the substance and balance to allow them to develop interestingly over coming decades.

Among mature vintages, the 1986 is a particularly good value, available for between £140-£180.

Haut-Bages Libéral

Pauillac fifth growth

The static nature of the 1855 Médoc Classification can make it hard to notice recent changes among the classified growths, even when they’re dramatic.

Such is the case at Haut-Bages Libéral, a fifth growth Pauillac now greatly overperforming.

I’d enjoyed encounters with the château’s wines, but they generally weren’t attention-grabbing – until seeing what technical director Thomas Bontemps has been up to since 2018.

The property is comprised of 30ha in three plots which run along the northern boundaries of Châteaux Latour, Pichon Baron and Pichon Comtesse.

The easternmost, just north of the Enclos of Latour, is gravelly with a high content of clay and limestone, conferring power and facilitating water retention in periods of hydric stress.

Moving to the west, plots are more typical to the gravel-rich plateau of Bages. The distribution of plantings has been about 70% Cabernet Sauvignon (with replanting nowadays from massal selection) and 30% Merlot; though now a little bit of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot are being planted – and, with an eye toward its potential in the era of climate change, a bit of Carmenère, too.

Bontemps’ goal is for the vines to self-regulate as much as possible, with the use of soft pruning techniques and avoidance of trimming in periods of vine stress, even if tendrils creep higher than the desired canopy height (1.4m, soil to top).

New farming approaches

Farming methods are a central part of owner Claire Villars-Lurton’s philosophy, and the property has been certified organic since 2019 and biodynamic since 2021.

A recent study identified 25 types of plant life per square metre among the vines, promoting micronutrient balance and soil aeration.

Four sheep help to regulate cover crops when they compete excessively with the vine.

This is one of the few estates to have plots with fruit trees interspersed among the vines, with influences on water consumption, water mobilisation, competition with the vine and biodiversity studied closely.

I am not a partisan for any particular viticultural approach, be it lutte raisonnée (where chemical treatments are only applied when absolutely necessary), organic or biodynamic, but whatever Thomas Bontemps and Claire Villars-Lurton are doing has clearly made the wines of Haut-Bages Libéral much more interesting and, in turn, excellent value.

The wines since 2018 have shown real power and depth. They are big yet balanced, full of deep raspberry and blackberry nuances and often freshened with a beautiful violet note.

Despite their excellence, vintages from 2018 on are easy to find in UK bond for £25-£30 per bottle.

Cos Labory

St-Estèphe fifth growth

In blind tastings of the five 1855 Grands Crus Classés of St-Estèphe, it’s usually obvious which two originate on the hill of Cos: Cos d’Estournel and Cos Labory often share an aromatic profile – the terroir has a real voice.

With no Audoy heirs ready to assume the reins at the château, Cos Labory was sold to Cos d’Estournel’s owner Michel Reybier in March 2023.

It is the first time since 1860 that the two properties have been united under the same ownership (their plots and wines will remain separate).

Conversations with technical director Angélique Vigouroux and her mentor Dominique Arangoïts at Cos d’Estournel have me more excited about Cos Labory than ever.

The hill of Cos is a geological layer-cake, with gravel on clay over limestone. Cos Labory has 35ha, with four of its five plots located on the gravelly top of the hill or its south, west and northern slopes, where the clay-limestone elements are closer to the surface and the exposure promotes slower ripening than among plots belonging to Cos d’Estournel.

Personality and quality

The mix of vines is currently 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc and 5% Petit Verdot, though those numbers may shift, likewise which varieties are planted in which plots following recently completed soil studies.

A massal selection is planned from some of Cos Labory’s excellent Cabernet Franc, while Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot from Cos d’Estournel’s massal selection may be planted.

Cos Labory is in the process of transitioning to organic viticulture. Vigouroux has also brought a lighter touch to vinification, with moderate fermentation temperatures (usually 26°-27°C) and pumping-over regimes adjusted such that extraction is lightened further. Like La Lagune, Cos Labory employs one of the shorter maturation periods seen among the 1855 Grands Crus Classés, usually 12-14 months in 25%-30% new oak.

Typically offering a combination of plum, pomegranate, blue/blackberries and floral potpourri, there’s a lot to like in Cos Labory.

While traditionally the property’s wines haven’t been as profound as those of its neighbour on the hill, they shouldn’t be discounted – Cos Labory offers real personality and a quality (particularly since 2010) that has surpassed its price.

The 2010 can still be found for £30 in bond, with vintages since 2016 available for between £25-£30 per bottle.

Léoville Poyferré

St-Julien second growth

The list has come full circle, back to northern St-Julien, and back to another Léoville.

A gentler touch has been the rule here, under the guidance of Sara Lecompte Cuvelier (managing director since 2018), with no reverse osmosis in the cellar, less de-leafing in the vineyard and increased viticultural precision overall.

The Cuvelier family’s holdings in St-Julien total 80ha, though 20ha are now entirely dedicated to Château Moulin Riche. Leoville Poyferré’s plots are mainly west of the village of St-Julien, running on a southeast-northwest axis.

The easternmost plots sit on rich Terrace 4 gravel, but moving progressively west, sandy gravel, sand and sandy clay are found. The distribution of plantings is 63% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, 7% Petit Verdot and 5% Cabernet Franc, though Merlot is often more highly represented in the grand vin’s blend.

Much has changed in recent years. Between 2006 and 2015, both sides of the vine were regularly de-leafed, which could exaggerate ripeness in vintages such as 2009.

A return to a more moderate de-leafing strategy and targeting moderate yields (around 45hl/ha) have helped Léoville Poyferré to retain equilibrium in hot vintages (Poyferré’s 2018 notably contrasts with its 2009, for example).

Decadently elegant

Work in the winery has favoured increasing delicacy also; reverse osmosis is no longer performed (the Merlot still often has a saignée – ‘bleeding off’ some of the juice from the skins to increase concentration).

Similarly, an R-pulse has replaced délestage (an oxygenating cap management technique also known as ‘rack and return’), perhaps refining the quality of Poyferré’s tannins.

An optical sorter has been in use since 2009 and the new winery, constructed in 2010, increased the number of vats from 35 to 57 to allow for individual plot selection.

The wines show the aromatic spectrum typical to the Léovilles, with mixed blue, black and red berries complemented by a potpourri perfume, but Poyferré tends to be the roundest, most plush of the three after a few years of bottle age.

While this differentiating characteristic can be emphasised by various interventions, the majority of its distinction from Léoville Las Cases and Léoville Barton lies in its terroir.

Take 1982 and 1990, for example, when the grape mix was similar, and different outside consultants were not yet involved – Poyferré’s place as the most decadently elegant of the three was just as assured as it is now.

While Léoville Poyferré is one of the more expensive wines on this list, it’s actually an excellent value en primeur and the secondary market is also full of value, with vintages such as 2005 and 2010 drinking well and trading at around £90 in bond.

Great value cru classé Bordeaux

Related articles

There’s been something of the stench of death around en primeur of late.

In early April, Decanter ran a story with the suitably dramatic declaration that: ‘If the Bordeaux 2025 campaign isn’t successful then en primeur is dead!’

The source of that quote was Edouard Mouiex, owner of the négociant Ets Jean-Pierre Moueix, which distributes top Bordeaux to more than 500 importers.

Or there was the analysis from Bordeaux Index in the May issue of Decanter, which likened recent campaigns to ‘a zombie franchise’ that was ‘hard to kill’.

Fine wine marketplace, Liv-ex, said in its pre-campaign report: ‘We are all rooting for the en primeur system… But, its longevity and success are by no means guaranteed.’

Doom and gloom over en primeur is nothing new. Successive years have brought repeated warnings around rising prices, a broken system, low customer sentiment, négociants on the brink of collapse, piles of unsold stock in cellars and warehouses.

It’s hard, though, to quantify how stretched exactly the system really is.

How much relief has the non-Bordeaux component really brought to négociants account books? How much stock are we actually talking about?

The warnings are dire but the hard facts are scarce. Push someone on what they actually know and they get all tight-lipped. One is merely left with the vague sense of the Damoclean but rarely a palpable threat of the sword.

At this point, all one can do is shrug and see if adding one more card will bring the whole house crashing down.

Here then are some things we do know as this new campaign begins.

Losing friends and allies

Last year’s campaign was dire. The 2024s were a reasonably solid if unspectacular set of wines offered with substantial cuts on the 2023s.

And yet, said Liv-ex, ‘several of our members [reported] declines of over 50%.’

Château Lafite Rothschild 2024 was the cheapest vintage of the first growth available on the market. In quite limited quantities too.

But, ‘it remains readily available’, added Liv-ex.

It’s not just long-term wine collectors who have felt let-down by the process, it’s the people selling the stuff too – nominally Bordeaux’s stalwart allies.

With sales in the doldrums meaning its waning importance as a headline sales event, frustration with en primeur has become more openly manifest among leading merchants in the UK and the US.

It started with little acts of rebellion – refusing to buy certain wines or openly expressing disappointment with certain offers and has grown from there.

As Liv-ex noted, last year merchants took increasingly stronger stances, ‘most cutting their purchasing significantly or buying solely on request, others publicly abandoning the system altogether’.

And it seems this is going to be the case this year as well, with reports of major merchants slashing their buying budgets and drastically limiting the number of wines they intend to offer.

Just when Bordeaux is starting to need it most, its open avenues to market are shrinking before its eyes.

Additional concerns

Then there is the overall economic situation. Looking again at last year’s market overview, things arguably felt a little bleaker.

The threat of US tariffs on European wines felt especially destabilising last year but, while they are now in place, one can at least plan around them. Even if, predicted Liv-ex, US participation will probably be limited as a result.

But there’s no doubt people are not feeling flush. There’s lethargy and caution in languid measure.

The war with Iran and subsequent standoff in the Strait of Hormuz gave financial markets a shock earlier in the year though the situation looks a little less choppy at present.

Bordeaux Index commented that: ‘Buyer sentiment remains weak and, in this era of omni-crises, only a fool would assume the outlook will surprise on the upside.’

Finding bright spots

None of the above exactly sets this year’s campaign up for a strong start. But there are a few positives to be found.

Market conditions are improving – The fine wine secondary market appears to have arrested its deep decline which means prices are less volatile.

Liv-ex noted that: ‘As the Bordeaux 500 moves its way out of (technical) oversold territory, price stability (rather than rapid rises) is likely.’

This is somewhat positive for the new vintage as it gives it a chance of offering some value relative to older wines rather than immediately looking overpriced.

It’s a good vintage – It really is. Maybe not great, and many commentators seem torn on exactly how good it really is – there are many comparisons being made to recent notable vintages such as 2022, 2019 and 2016 – but it’s certainly a BIG step up from 2024.

Despite some tough conditions, there is broad agreement that the good wines are going to be very, very drinkable.

The exchange is in collectors’ favour – if you’re not buying in euros that is. But recent strengthening of the US dollar and sterling increases the purchasing power in two core markets.

And, noted Liv-ex, if the Bank of England holds interest rates while European Central Banks cut, that purchasing power may strengthen further.

Possibility for ‘bargains’? – All things being relative of course but if prices don’t move much from last year’s heavily discounted level… there’s the chance to pick up some top wines for a song.

It’s a small vintage – Very small actually. Last year it was announced that 2024 was the smallest yield since the frost-struck 1991. That title lasted until, well, 2025.

Overall production in 2025 was well under half that of 2016 (admittedly a big vintage) and production at some estates is miniscule. As well as very limited quantities of first wines, a few estates won’t even be producing second wines at all, including Cheval Blanc and Ausone.

Now, this does raise problems for the Bordelais – see below – but as Bordeaux Index said, ‘in a market still grappling with excess supply, it may prove helpful [to prevent further over-supply].’

And from the Bordelais point of view it somewhat puts the ball back in your court. If you want it (and the price is right) you may not want to hang around.

If the price is right

Which brings us on to that ultimate thorny question of every en primeur campaign – the price.

The mantra of commentators and more vocal merchants like Liv-ex and Bordeaux Index respectively is always along the lines of ‘listen to the market’ and ‘pricing must reflect reality’.

The simple fact is that Bordeaux producers are in a bind this year. The wines are better than last year but with expectations and buyer confidence ‘muted’ there’s very little room for rises.

Anything over 15% probably risks all-out mutiny. And this is a vintage that the Bordelais need to sell.

As mentioned above it’s a very small vintage. And while small vintages can involve higher quality wines (as this one proves) as Bordeaux editor, Georgie Hindle, has been at pains to stress, there comes a point where small vintages don’t become commercially viable.

This was the case last year as well, and we’re now in a string of several small vintages in a row.

After a while, the cost of production – expensive sorting machines, labour to pick grapes, new barrels (close to €1,000 a pop now) etc. etc. – starts to add up and outweigh the return being achieved.

If you’re being hard-nosed you might shrug and say that’s the price of past mistakes. A longer-term approach to pricing strategies and building relationships would have been the sensible option, rather than chasing the quick money.

But there’s always room to make right and the first two releases of this campaign – Château Pontet-Canet and Château Batailley – suggest Bordeaux is once again willing to make amends.

Learn the hard lessons

The campaign has just begun of course. If this is going to be a quick campaign (as some think) then there is always a danger that momentum starts to see prices rise and positive early murmurs turn to disinterested grumbles by the mid-to-late point.

The Bordelais need to bear in mind that market stability is not full recovery and, said Liv-ex, ‘it is tenuous, contingent on supportive geopolitical and economic conditions and the perseverance of buyers’.

Bordeaux Index laid out a reminder that, ‘today’s buyer is better informed and more selective than ever,’ referencing the shift in buying habits to other French, Italian, and global fine wines that have taken such a chunk out of Bordeaux’s market share in recent years.

‘Bordeaux isn’t essential,’ it concluded, ‘but it can still be irresistible.’

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Take our Bordeaux en primeur quiz below

Bordeaux en primeur season is upon us, with the first releases emerging this week, and we've compiled a light-hearted, 10-question quiz related to this annual landmark in the wine calendar.

These multiple choice questions blend history with recent trends and general knowledge around en primeur.

Follow all of Decanter's in-depth Bordeaux 2025 en primeur coverage via our dedicated page. Hundreds of exclusive tasting notes are set to be published for Decanter Premium subscribers on Friday 1 May.

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Bordeaux 2025 arrives to mixed market

Bordeaux’s latest en primeur season has arrived, entering a market that’s balancing improved buyer sentiment against macroeconomic uncertainty and plentiful supplies.

Bordeaux’s 2025 vintage has garnered an early reputation as a high-quality, low-volume crop, though barrel samples of the wines were still being tasted as Decanter went to press.

The build-up to this year’s releases campaign was dominated by heightened macroeconomic uncertainty and intense scrutiny of the en primeur system, yet also better fine wine market sentiment.

Geraint Carter, of international merchant Bordeaux Index and the LiveTrade online trading platform, said: ‘There’s a bit more activity around Bordeaux than there was a year ago, and a fair chunk of that is in younger vintages – such as 2019 and 2020 – where prices have [largely] come down and they appear to represent value.’ (See table below)

At Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, the Bordeaux 500 index crept up 0.2% in value in the first quarter of 2026, although it was still down 15.3% over five years.

Sophia Gilmour, Liv-ex market analyst, described the broader market as ‘stable but precarious’.

Despite improved conditions in the past six months, she said: ‘We’ll more than likely bump along the bottom for a while as buyers rebuild their trust in prices and sellers begin to clear the surplus stock.’

Carter said there’s no shortage of young, good-quality Bordeaux. He cited 2019 as a high-quality vintage offering a potential point of comparison for the 2025-vintage campaign.

He suggested that if one assumes that the vintages are of similar quality, 2025 would have to be ‘at a serious discount to current 2019 [vintage] prices’ (see table) to be interesting from an investment perspective.

Release prices above this level may still attract collectors seeking to secure ex-château wines for future drinking pleasure, of course.

Many châteaux have already cut release prices over the past two campaigns, albeit sales for 2024-vintage wines were generally weak.

In the US, ongoing uncertainty regarding current and future tariffs were an additional stumbling block, said Shaun Bishop, CEO of California-based merchant JJ Buckley.

‘If the client doesn’t fully understand the final (delivered) price, then the en primeur release pricing is pretty much moot.’

The Bordeaux Index view

Fine wine & spirits specialist Bordeaux Index kindly sponsors this section of Decanter, and provides its view on the market here every issue. It can be found at bordeauxindex.com

Reanimating en primeur

To the cynic, Bordeaux en primeur 2025 feels like the fifth instalment of a zombie franchise that ran out of ideas in part two: hard to kill and increasingly divorced from reality.

Expectations are understandably muted, with recent campaigns having lurched between the frustrating and the frankly absurd.

And yet, there are still grounds for cautious optimism. Early indications suggest a vintage of genuine quality. In an era of ever-greater precision in vineyard management and cellar technique, it’s a welcome reminder that greatness still rests heavily on nature’s goodwill.

Encouragingly, 2025 also continues a run of smaller vintages which, in isolation, is rarely good news for producers or consumers, but in a market still grappling with excess supply, it may prove helpful.

However, all of this will be squandered if pricing is wrong. So we end with a gentle exhortation to producers: the small improvement in sentiment late last year shouldn’t be mistaken for a full recovery.

Buyer sentiment remains weak and, in this era of omni-crises, only a fool would assume the outlook will surprise to the upside. Today’s buyer is better informed and more selective than ever, and with ample back vintages available and the cost of capital rising, pricing must reflect reality.

Bordeaux isn’t essential, but it can still be irresistible. Price with realism and humility, or risk becoming the sequel nobody asked for.

Auction news and latest releases

Latour 2019 makes its debut

Château Latour 2019 (100pts, Decanter) has been one of several high-profile releases hitting the market for the first time in recent weeks.

Latour 2019 was around £2,790 (6x75cl in bond) in the UK. Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, said the wine was among the more expensive Latour vintages on the market but below the price of Latour 2016, a fellow 100-point wine released to widespread acclaim last year.

Geraint Carter, of Bordeaux Index and the LiveTrade online trading platform, said demand for Latour 2019 began modestly but that the wine ended up selling ‘pretty well’.

Other Bordeaux releases in recent weeks have included Château d’Yquem 2023, with particularly strong scores.

Liv-ex quoted an ex-negociant price of €255-a-bottle, similar to other recent vintages, with an international release price of £3,120 (12x75cl in bond).

Fine wine diary: What's coming up

Taste Bordeaux 2025

Bordeaux’s en primeur campaign will likely dominate the releases landscape in May. In London, Berry Bros & Rudd will host a tasting of Bordeaux 2025 samples on 12 May. Prospective buyers can also read in-depth analysis and exclusive tasting notes from the vintage online via Decanter.com and Decanter Premium, and look out for a report in the next issue.

One-off Oregon wines

A 10th edition of the Willamette Valley Wine Auction will take place in May, showcasing one-of-a-kind, 2024-vintage wines from this US stronghold for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. An online auction and live event on 13 May will be followed by a trade-only sale on 14 May. For more details, see the auction website.

Christie’s in Asia

Christie’s is set to auction the fifth, and final, instalment of rare wines from the cellar of collector Joseph Lau, in Hong Kong on 22 May. It’s part of a series of sales of different collectibles, ranging from fine art to precious jewels, to mark 40 years of Christie’s auctions in Asia.

Clos Vougeot festival and auction

The 18th edition of the Musique et Vin au Clos Vougeot, to be held in June, will feature charity auctions of a range of top Burgundy wines. Sotheby’s said that it will host an online auction from 15 to 30 June, and there will be a live sale and gala dinner on 28 June, the final evening of the festival.

Please note: Release schedules are subject to change.

Decanter’s Market Watch pages are published for informational purposes only and do not constitute investment advice. Wine prices may vary and they can go down as well as up. Seek independent advice where necessary and be aware that wine investment is unregulated in several markets, including the UK.

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1. One of the earliest harvests on record but the wines don’t taste like it

From the very beginning the 2025 season was in a hurry. Budbreak was nearly two weeks ahead of average, flowering flew through in mid-May under perfect dry conditions, and véraison hit in late July.

Temperatures were above the 10-year average for almost all of the growing cycle and record levels of water deficits during the ripening period explain the extremely precocious nature of the vintage.

Dry whites were picked from mid-August (Sauvignon as early as the 11th), Merlot kicked off historically early at the end of August at some estates and Cabernet followed in mid-September.

It’s one of the earliest harvests most growers can remember yet it has delivered remarkable aromatic purity and surprising freshness with overall low pHs (meaning high and fresh acidity).

2. The weather delivered the perfect mix of stress and relief

A mild winter, rapid even flowering and a long dry summer built serious concentration.

June and August were scorching (2025 sits second only to 2003 for days above 35°C), but crucially the nights stayed relatively cool, preserving acidity.

The real hero moment came at the end of August when the tail-end of Hurricane Erin brought 25–100 mm of rain depending on where you were (up to 90mm in Pauillac but around 25mm in Pomerol).

That timely shower eased the vines and, while it didn’t add any significant volume, it finished ripening the late Cabernets, prevented over-ripeness and kept alcohols surprisingly moderate (mostly 12.5–13.5 %).

Growers are calling it the ‘blessing’ and without it a style that would have been much more in keeping with that of 2022.

The 2025s also benefited from limited mildew pressure, no frost and no real risk of rot.

In short, it ticked all five classic preconditions for a great vintage – something that has happened only twice since 2021.

3. The style is concentrated yet fresh - reds, whites and sweets all shining

Tastings show reds with beautiful skin-to-juice ratios, thick-skinned small berries, high colour, ripe but refined tannins and juicy, cool fruit.

Despite all the heat and drought, they don’t have the opulence of 2022. Many people (myself included) are finding them closer in feel to 2020 and especially 2023 with some elements of both 2016 and 2019.

Cabernets are tight and compact for now, Merlots fruit-forward and supple on the best limestone/clay sites.

Dry whites are astonishingly aromatic and lively despite the earliness, with pH around 3.1 (so acidities are fresh).

Sweet wines from Sauternes and Barsac also did tremendously well: noble rot arrived cleanly after the late-August rain, giving concentration yet vibrancy.

It’s rare for every category to look this promising at once. While not universally brilliant like 2016 or 2022, quality is excellent at the top level and the best wines are genuinely exceptional.

4. Yields are tiny – the smallest since 1991

This is the fifth year in a row of low production and 2025 has taken it even further. The Gironde expects around 290 million litres (average 33.6hl/ha) – roughly half the volume of a big year like 2016.

Many classed-growth estates are reporting 26–35hl/ha, with some white plots as low as 20hl/ha.

The low volumes were partly expected from the outset because of poor floral initiation caused by the difficult 2024 growing season (small flower clusters meant fewer bunches right from the start).

On top of that, the severe hydric stress this year further reduced berry size and weight.

Add in the fact that 20,000 hectares of vineyard have been ripped up or abandoned in the past three years and you can see why supply is now extremely tight.

Quality-wise the concentration is ideal; economically it’s a real challenge for growers.

5. Market-wise, this could be one of the smartest buys in years

With production this low (it will be the smallest number of Château Margaux grand vin bottles since 1856!) and quality high, the 2025s are going to be scarce.

If opening prices rise only modestly from 2024 (which is what many négociants are hoping for) – or not at all – the 2025s will be sitting at roughly half the current secondary-market level of the legendary 2010 vintage.

While that feels like proper value, especially when the wines combine early drinkability with the potential to age, these are not easy times for the Bordeaux market or wine market in general.

In any case, with the campaign already underway (Pontet Canet announced its price on 29 April), it's going to be interesting to see it unfold.

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Top châteaux from Pauillac to Pomerol are preparing their Bordeaux 2025 en primeur release offers after the region welcomed journalists, critics and merchants from across the world for its annual barrel tastings.

This Friday (1 May), hundreds of exclusive tasting notes on Bordeaux 2025 wines will be made available to Decanter Premium subscribers, alongside in-depth analysis on the vintage and market conditions – to give readers the best possible insight.

Early signs point to a small yet thrilling Bordeaux 2025 vintage at many estates, with the best wines hitting heights that one has come to associate with years ending in ‘5’.

Pricing will inevitably be an important factor in a Bordeaux 2025 en primeur campaign that is facing persistent macroeconomic storm clouds and a wine market that is well-stocked with recent vintages.

Decanter's Bordeaux 2025 en primeur coverage

What's coming up on Friday 1 May

• Full Bordeaux 2025 vintage report with in-depth look at key appellations
• Exclusive tasting notes and scores on hundreds of Bordeaux 2025 wines
• Market insights, including expert commentary and release price analysis
• Decanter Value Index: The best first growth vintages for collectors

Setting the scene

At its best, en primeur is a great opportunity to secure ex-château stocks of brilliant wines in a variety of bottle formats – at an advantageous price.

The small size of the Bordeaux 2025 crop at many estates could enhance the sense of en primeur as a buying opportunity.

However, sales have broadly struggled in recent campaigns amid challenging market conditions. Some wines have fallen in price following en primeur release, according to several sources, including Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade.

Despite some relative success stories for individual names, the en primeur system has come under further scrutiny.

‘There are always some wines that “work”,’ wrote market expert Miles Davis, of Vinum Fine Wines, in his April report – setting out reasons why the merchant still backs en primeur.

However, he said a key problem to date has been ‘comparable vintages available on the secondary market at prices less than the new release’.

Many châteaux have made big efforts to cut release prices in the past two years, and pricing will inevitably be something to watch closely this time around.

With the right vintage at the right price, en primeur can be an exciting time.

It's also an opportunity to explore the latest vintage to have arrived in Bordeaux estates' cellars.

Insights gleaned during en primeur offer an unrivalled window into winemaking developments across a region that is sometimes underrated for its ability to balance tradition with dynamism.

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Two Lafite 1870 magnums fetch $306,250 combined

As critics headed to Bordeaux to taste en primeur samples of the 2025 vintage, collectors vied for magnums of Lafite 1870 and other legendary wines at a Sotheby's single-owner auction in New York.

All lots found buyers as total sales soared to $2.1m (£1.55m), around $800,000 above the pre-sale high estimate, and Sotheby's claimed 10 world records.

While existential debate has surrounded the en primeur system in a still-choppy market, this white-glove sale of 'immortal vintages' served as a timely reminder of the allure and longevity of Bordeaux's finest wines.

A bidding war lasting nearly four minutes saw one magnum of Lafite 1870 sell for $200,000, including buyer’s premium – four times its pre-sale high estimate.

Just before that, a first magnum fetched $106,250. Both were originally part of a fabled cache of particularly well-preserved fine wines discovered at Glamis Castle in Scotland more than 50 years ago, said Sotheby's.

Meanwhile, a single bottle of revered wine Lafite 1865 sold for $40,000, double its pre-sale high estimate.

Five more highlights from 'once-in-a-generation' cellar

Large-format bottles of legendary 20th century Bordeaux wines also starred.

‘This was a once-in-a-generation collection,’ said Richard Young, Sotheby’s Wine head of auction sales, Americas. ‘From pre-phylloxera legends to modern icons, every bottle told a story, and collectors responded with remarkable enthusiasm.’

Highlights included:

• A six-litre ‘Imperial’ of Château Lafite Rothschild 1959 | Sold for $81,250 (high e: $50,000)
• Two magnums of Château Trotanoy 1921 | $68,750 (high e: $15,000)
• A 4.5-litre Jeroboam of Château Haut-Brion 1959 | $60,000 (high e: $30,000)
• A double magnum of Château Palmer 1961 | $62,500 (high e: $24,000)
• Two magnums of Château Latour 1961 | $43,750 (high e: $18,000)

Lafite 1870 from Glamis Castle

Glamis Castle is the ancestral seat of the earls of Strathmore and Kinghorne. It has been home to royals and said to have inspired Shakespeare's Macbeth, but cellar logs also show that 48 magnums of Lafite 1870 were purchased in 1878.

After laying undisturbed for nearly a century, Christie's auctioned the cellar in 1971 and the wines were considered to be in especially well-preserved condition.

Sotheby’s said the Lafite 1870 magnum that fetched $200,000 bears no label, other than a red wax capsule embossed with 'Coningham Claret'.

It added the wine hasn’t been reconditioned or recorked, making it one of the ‘purest’ examples of Lafite 1870 available today.

Bordeaux under the hammer

Lord Rothschild and Andrew Lloyd Webber to sell rarities

In a busy spring auction season for top Bordeaux, UK auction house Dreweatts is planning to offer Lafite vintages from 1956 to 1997 from Lord Rothschild’s cellar at Stowell Park on 28 April.

Meanwhile, Christie’s will auction ‘final treasures’ from celebrated composer Andrew Lloyd Weber’s cellar from 22 April to 6 May. Lots include Cheval Blanc 1947, Petrus 1990 and d’Yquem 1949.

An improving wine market?

Falling prices and cautious buyers have been key themes on the fine wine market in recent years, albeit auction houses have always said collectors were willing to dive in for the right opportunities – as shown by other high-profile sales.

Since late 2025, there have been growing reports of improving sentiment for the very top-tier wines, with some prices stabilising.

Yet, significant challenges remain, from macroeconomic uncertainty to high stock levels of younger vintages.

At Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, the Fine Wine 50 index that tracks recent vintages of Bordeaux first growths rose 0.6% in value in the first quarter of 2026 but was still down 17.7% over five years.

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Keeping up with the fast-paced South African wine scene can feel like following Fashion Week.

One year, the trend is old-vine Chenin Blanc, the next it’s Syrah. Varieties such as Grenache burst onto the scene, while niche varieties such as Tinta Barroca move in and out of favour with open-minded and experimental winemakers.

Yet there’s one style for which South Africa has long been known: Bordeaux blends, wines made from a combination of the main grape varieties of the French region, generally Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

‘If you go back 30 years, it was Bordeaux blends that first built momentum for South Africa on the world stage,’ says Mike Ratcliffe, co-founder of Vilafonté, maker of one of the Cape’s most successful premium Bordeaux blends.

While Stellenbosch dominated conversations about South African fine wine in the decade after the end of apartheid, in the early 21st century, attention shifted to other regions, such as Swartland.

Yet Bordeaux blends never went away and in recent years, the pendulum has swung back towards Stellenbosch and Constantia, where the classic Bordeaux varieties thrive.

Here, change has been less headline-grabbing than in regions such as Swartland, but no less significant. Today the Cape’s Bordeaux blends are better than ever, as was proved in the results of the South African red blends panel tasting in last month’s issue (March 2026).

Increased quality and finesse are being driven by healthier vineyards, an improved understanding of where to plant and a more site-specific and nuanced approach to winemaking.

Beyond imitation

The least technical but perhaps most important change has been a growth in confidence among the estates and winemakers working with the classic Bordeaux varieties.

Luke O’Cuinneagain has two decades’ experience working with them, from Rustenberg to Glenelly and, since 2022, as head winemaker at Vergelegen.

He has lived through an era in which the wines chased ripeness, richness and impact in order to compete in the market.

‘In the past, we were terrified that someone would describe our wines as green, so we waited until the grapes were really ripe,’ he recalls.

‘In the early 2000s, everyone seemed to want to make bigger and bigger wines.’ But as winemakers gained experience with these varieties, they started to believe that their wines could be more than just a version of red Bordeaux.

‘We’re not trying to make Margaux in the Cape,’ O’Cuinneagain says. ‘Our wines often have a taste of dried herbs or the local fynbos, which Bordeaux wines don’t have.’

Letting go of Bordeaux dogma and embracing local variation has been a liberating move for many winemakers. Some now choose to add a dash of Syrah to their Bordeaux blends for spice; others are experimenting with varieties such as Cinsault to add perfume and bring lightness of touch.

Some celebrated vintages helped; the 2015 and 2017 harvests produced critically acclaimed wines for the Bordeaux varieties and, as O’Cuinneagain puts it, ‘gave us the courage to embrace vintage expression rather than trying to make things to a style’.

Zero tolerance approach

An increased focus on viticulture has also been fundamental to improving quality and refining South Africa’s Bordeaux blends.

The drought vintages of 2016-2018 were a major challenge, but they forced winemakers to deal with the Cape’s elephant in the room: grapevine leafroll disease.

As its name suggests, this viral vine malady causes leaves to curl, reducing the plant’s ability to ripen grapes evenly, which is especially problematic for later-ripening red varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon.

It has been widespread in South Africa’s Cabernet vineyards for decades and, while many estates have learned to work around it, in the glass it typically dulls fruit definition, mutes aromatic lift and makes a wine’s ‘shape’ feel less clear – a contrast that has become more obvious as producers replant with virus-free material.

Vergelegen was among the early pioneers in combating leafroll. André van Rensburg, winemaker there until 2022, established the estate’s influential zero-tolerance stance and is characteristically blunt about the trade-off.

‘Virus control is non-negotiable,’ he says. ‘You can make good wine from virus-affected blocks, but you can make better wine from healthy material.’

In reality, many wineries tolerated leaf-roll, precisely because they were still making good wine. In addition, it had been difficult to guarantee virus-free material from local vine nurseries until relatively recently, meaning wineries that thought they had bought virus-free plants were disappointed, yet unable to fund another round of replanting.

Lessons from the drought

The first post-drought vintage in 2019 made it clear that a large number of old Cabernet Sauvignon vines were exhausted and many estates decided that the time was right to replant.

At that point, the conversation moved from coping strategies to hard decisions about grubbing up and starting again. ‘At Meerlust, we started to replant in 2019 and that’s continued since,’ says winemaker Wim Truter, whose first full vintage as winemaker was 2021.

‘We took a hard line: if it didn’t belong in the Rubicon blend, we ripped the Band-Aid off and pulled it out. We replanted with the best clones, on the best sites, with the right rootstocks.’

This new plant material has been a vital driver of improved quality in South Africa’s Bordeaux blends over the last decade and, as the vines age, wine quality is only expected to improve.

While virus-infected vines needed longer for their grapes to reach proper ripeness, the new plant material ripens earlier and more predictably. This has been transformational in cooler, longer growing seasons such as 2023.

‘If we hadn’t replanted with clean material, we wouldn’t have made a wine at all in 2023, because the grapes would not have ripened before the March rains came,’ Truter points out.

Freshness over force

It’s not just about improvement in vineyards, however. Back in the cellars, winemaking has become more sensitive and winemakers have adapted their blending and ageing techniques to prioritise freshness rather than power.

The result has been the emergence of a new wave of Stellenbosch wines with more poised fruit, crisper tannins and lower alcohol than during the 2000s. That doesn’t mean leaner, more austere wines, however, nor does it necessarily mean less oak.

Despite international trends, few grapes work as well with new French oak as Cabernet Sauvignon, and the maturation of wines in barrique remains fundamental for the Bordeaux blends in the Cape.

While new oak remains important, wines are aged in barrel for shorter periods. O’Cuinneagain notes that South Africa’s wines don’t often need the typical 24 months in barrel afforded to top red Bordeaux, for example.

‘With our warmer climate, at 14 months I get the level of wood expression that Bordeaux winemakers get at 24,’ he reveals.

Cape winemaking approaches to Bordeaux varieties are now about more measured extraction, extended post-ferment skin contact to soften tannin texture and ever more precise choices around the coopers who supply the barrels, time in barrel and toast levels (the open-fire charring of the inside of the staves) to allow wood to frame and complement the fruit without dominating it.

Cabernet Franc and the Helderberg renaissance

Much of the finesse of this new era’s Bordeaux blends is down to one variety in particular: Cabernet Franc.

It’s a speciality of two cooler-climate areas in southern Stellenbosch – Polkadraai and Helderberg – both of which are strongly influenced by maritime breezes coming up from nearby False Bay.

It was Bruwer Raats of Raats Family Wines in Polkadraai who led the charge for Cabernet Franc, signalling that cooler corners of Stellenbosch could do something special with the variety.

Alongside Raats, wineries such as Reyneke and De Toren have also embraced it, both as a varietal wine and as part of a Bordeaux blend.

However, its most significant re-emergence in terms of blended wines is on the cool Helderberg mountain in the southeast of Stellenbosch, where vineyards experience less sunlight exposure than in northern Stellenbosch and sit a few kilometres from the sea.

As early as 1995, the Helderberg had captured attention with the production of a wine called Crescendo from the Cordoba farm. It was widely praised for its finesse, but at the turn of the century, this wasn’t the trait that most South African Bordeaux blends were chasing and the last official release was the 2003 vintage.

At the same time, attention shifted away from Stellenbosch and the Helderberg seemed to slip off the radar.

The Cordoba farm continued to supply blending fruit to top winemakers, but without a flagship label to champion the site, it drifted into relative obscurity, even as the 1995 Crescendo gained legendary status among collectors and drinkers.

In 2017, the Cordoba vineyards were acquired by Oddo Vins & Domaines and the estate was renamed Taaibosch.

A Bordeaux blend based on Cabernet Franc, consciously styled in homage to the original Cordoba wine, was released under the Crescendo label with the 2018 vintage. Alongside estates such as Uva Mira, one of the most serious proponents of Cabernet Franc on the mountain, Taaibosch emerged as a standard-bearer for the Helderberg renaissance.

‘Cordoba Crescendo was one of the first Cape blends built around Cabernet Franc, and the Helderberg fruit has a tannin structure that feels completely different,’ says Schalk-Willem Joubert, winemaker at Taaibosch.

‘Cabernet Franc can be picked at the red-fruit stage here without resulting in overly herbaceous flavours in the wine, but with natural acidity and really refined tannins.’

Constantia calling

If the cool climate of southern Stellenbosch was helping to change the perception of that region’s Bordeaux blends, the same was happening near the coast to the west in Constantia.

Here, too, Cabernet Franc has emerged as an important variety that has brought more finesse and perfume to the region’s Bordeaux blends.

‘I prefer the term “Constantia red”,’ says Beau Constantia winemaker Megan van der Merwe with a smile. ‘We have the ocean on three sides so we’re as maritime as it gets. Cabernet Franc and Merlot are the cornerstone varieties here as we are on the cooler part of the ward.’

Freshness is a given in Constantia: high rainfall means irrigation is unnecessary and fewer sunlight hours leads to gentler ripening than in the warmer northern wards of Stellenbosch.

For van der Merwe, winemaker since 2019, the challenge has been about understanding what Constantia’s red varieties have to offer in their coastal climate.

‘From 2019, we’ve consciously softened our touch, both in the vineyard and the cellar, to allow the site to speak more clearly,’ she says.

‘By getting more involved in the vineyards, the individuality of our blocks has come through more distinctly and the wines have gained a greater sense of clarity and balance.’

Beyond fashion

The last decade has seen two standout vintages, a game-changing drought, extensive investment and a reappraisal of where the Western Cape’s strengths lie, particularly with cooler-climate zones and Cabernet Franc.

South Africa’s winemakers know that premium Bordeaux blends might not set the pulse racing among trend-chasing journalists, but the many refinements in the category over the last decade have brought a fresh sense of focus to the wines.

If the Cape’s trend cycle changes with the seasons, Bordeaux blends are a quiet constant and today they’re in serious form.

‘There is a comfort and familiarity in Bordeaux blends,’ concludes Mike Ratcliffe. ‘Their ability to consistently deliver and not disappoint is important. They are still our top-selling premium wines. We might have stopped talking about them, but I don’t think they ever went out of fashion.’

Cape classics: Millar's pick of 12 Bordeaux Blends

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Top Super Tuscans – Sassicaia, Tignanello, Solaia, Ornellaia and Masseto – dominate Italian wine trading at Bordeaux Index and its LiveTrade online trading platform (see table), though demand is below a 2022 peak.

‘People continue to like the story [of these wines],’ said Geraint Carter, of Bordeaux Index, noting particular interest in top-rated vintages.

Some prices appeared to have stabilised after rising steeply up to 2022 and falling relatively modestly in the recent market downturn.

Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, said its Italy 100 index dropped 7.2% in value in 24 months to 28 February 2026, but was up 9% over five years.

Tuscany outperformed Piedmont, said Tom Burchfield, head of market intelligence at Liv-ex.

‘Prices for top-end Tuscan wines rose further than Piedmont wines in the upmarket, have been more resilient in the downmarket and early indications are that they might recover more quickly.’

He added, ‘Since August [2025], Tuscan components [of the Italy 100] are up 1.7%, while Piedmont components are up 0.9%.’

No longer overlooked

Carter suggested that further significant price rises for Super Tuscans in the short-term were unlikely, given the ongoing market uncertainty and prior gains. These wines ‘have gone through their transition of being overlooked’, he added.

Burchfield said trading on Italy was ‘quite inconsistent’ in 2026 so far. ‘While there is generally more price stability, we are not seeing buyers really rise up to offers with any haste.’

Tenuta San Guido released Sassicaia 2023 in February. Anna Hickson, brand manager for Tenuta San Guido at UK agent Armit Wines reported high trade interest.

‘Despite the challenging market conditions, Sassicaia continues to be viewed as offering strong value at the premium end of the fine wine market.’

In New York, Lauren McPhate, partner at Tribeca Wine Merchants, described demand for top Italian wines as robust, helped by top vintages, Super Tuscan brand power and also Piedmont.

‘Barolo [and] Barbaresco are always drivers, especially older, harderto-find vintages: 2010, 2016 and bottles reaching back to the 1960s and ’70s are moving with confidence.’

The Bordeaux Index view

Fine wine & spirits specialist Bordeaux Index kindly sponsors this section of Decanter, and provides its view on the market here every issue. It can be found at bordeauxindex.com

Tuscany joins the top table

The transformation of Tuscany’s position in the fine-wine market over the past two decades has been truly impressive.

Once a relative bit-part player in a trade dominated by Bordeaux and, to a lesser extent, Burgundy and Champagne, Tuscany is now a consistent mainstay.

This rise has been driven largely by the region’s aristocrats, whose wines have evolved into luxury brands with broad global demand and strong liquidity – a standing built on critical acclaim, improvements in quality and, crucially, a perception of value relative to Bordeaux.

Performance has matched the narrative. Italian icons such as Sassicaia and Tignanello were leading participants in the bull market of the late 2010s and early 2020s, and have proved resilient during the subsequent correction.

Altogether, this represents a striking repositioning, achieved in no small part as Bordeaux spent much of the decade after 2007 eroding its own competitive advantage.

That said, the dominance of the Super Tuscans is unfortunate given the wealth of authentic quality elsewhere across Tuscany and Italy’s other wine regions, much of which remains criminally under-appreciated.

Recent releases suggest producers are aiming to capture a greater share of the upside.

That is understandable, but the lesson from Bordeaux is clear: push too far, too quickly, and the consumer has a habit of pushing back.

Hospices de Nuits-St-Georges ‘100% sold’

In France, auctioneer iDealwine reported signs of ‘strong early confidence’ in Burgundy’s 2025 vintage after all lots sold in the 65th Hospices de Nuits-St-Georges charity auction on 8 March, raising €1.526m in total.

However, only 80.5 barrels were offered in this year’s sale, versus 100-150 in a typical year, said iDealwine.

This reflected limited yields in 2025 – albeit more generous than in the 2024 vintage.

Fine wine diary: Upcoming releases

Bordeaux 2025 en primeur: Critics and journalists will descend on Bordeaux in mid-April to taste barrel samples of the 2025 vintage. The first en primeur releases normally follow shortly afterwards, and the broader campaign can run across May and June. Stay tuned for analysis on quality and prices.

Judgement of Paris collection: In an ‘almost unheard of’ offering for collectors on 1 May, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art said it will auction a single lot featuring 10 red wines from the famous 1976 Judgement of Paris tasting. The lot includes overall champion wine Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars SLV Cabernet Sauvignon 1973, plus Mouton Rothschild 1970.

Auction Napa Valley: Tickets have been made available for this year’s Auction Napa Valley weekend in early June. Three new packages for the traditional ‘Napa Valley Barrel Auction’ include a VIP tier that offers a winemaker dinner on the prior evening, said trade body Napa Valley Vintners.

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Edouard Moueix, owner of the négociant Ets Jean-Pierre Moueix, which distributes top Bordeaux to more than 500 importers across 87 countries, is under no illusions as to the significance of the impending En Primeur season.

And he is well positioned to know.

Something of a Bordeaux kingpin, his family also owns of a string of stellar properties on the region’s Right Bank, from the Pomerol estates La Fleur-Pétrus, Hosanna and Trotanoy to the St-Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classé Château Bélair-Monange.

Coming from such an authoritative source, it is a bold statement.

‘En Primeur is a wounded animal’

It is while in London to showcase his wines to the high-end clientele of Swiss fine-wine merchant Vintage Cellar that Moueix shares with me some candid reflections on the market.

‘En Primeur is a wounded animal,’ says the 49-year-old, citing the past three campaigns.

‘2024 was not a great vintage; 2023 was good but the volumes were huge, so there was no urgency; and the 2022 wines were fantastic but the prices were extremely high so it didn’t work.’

2025, he says, will be a ‘good-to-very-good-vintage’ across the board, with small volumes, which could help stimulate the market.

He predicts, with some confidence, that prices will be ‘very similar’ to 2024 – most likely with a modest increase, but for much better quality.

‘Put all those elements together, and it should be a successful campaign,’ he says. ‘If it isn’t, there’s a real problem.’

The hot, dry summer of 2025 yielded fewer but also smaller grapes, while the major rain events of the season were relatively localised.

As a result, says Moueix: ‘What I’ve tasted so far suggests the difference between the Left Bank and Right Bank. The elegance and controlled power on the Left Bank versus full-bodied and rounded juiciness on the Right Bank is more exaggerated this year.’

He expresses hope that En Primeur will be a relatively early and quick campaign – something that would further bolster the likelihood of a successful market response.

‘Our dream, as a négociant, is that the wines are all released by the time of [the trade show] Vinexpo in Hong Kong.'

This is set for the final week of May.

‘Worldwide crisis’

Moueix is adamant that Bordeaux producers know they need to keep prices down in a depressed market, but is keen to stress that the challenges are not just linked to the Gironde.

‘There's a massive crisis in wine all around the world,’ he says.

He is also quick to point out that it’s not just Bordeaux where prices have risen to an extent where consumers have been priced out.

‘I can’t afford to drink Burgundy anymore,’ he adds.

Though he is too diplomatic to say so, I sense a lingering frustration that Bordeaux has borne the brunt of price criticism compared to his counterparts in the Côte d’Or.

‘Bordeaux-bashing has become a national sport,’ he laughs. ‘There is a perception that Burgundy producers are always in the vineyard, while we are holed up in our big châteaux.’

Part of the problem, he believes, is that most Bordeaux producers don’t sell their wines themselves, which keeps them a step removed from the market.

‘What are they waiting for?’

Pouring Hosanna 2009 and La Fleur-Pétrus 2010 for the well-heeled customers of Vintage Cellar, however, Moueix says there is one trend for which Bordeaux producers should be grateful to Burgundy – the move to lower the age at which its wines are opened.

‘My grandfather never drank wines that were 50 years old,’ he said. ‘It’s only more recently that people started venerating wines of that age. Take the [Bordeaux] 2000s. That was a quarter of a century ago, yet some people still say they’re too young. What are they waiting for?’

Part of the reason, he says, is that the 1990s and 2000s yielded many ‘over-extracted’ wines which were ‘undrinkable’ on release.

‘That and the scourge of investment,’ he adds, which made such wines ‘better for the ego’.

Today, such hoarding is less in vogue, with consumers seemingly keen to broach wines earlier – a fashion that Moueix is pleased to see.

‘We should be drinking Bordeaux like Burgundy, at 10 to 15 years old. At 15 years old, you still have some fruit, but you have tertiary aromas too. The wine has found its balance. You have more pleasure.

'The older the wine, the more it loses its identity. With a 50-year-old wine, you’re lucky if you can even tell it’s from Bordeaux.’

‘100% Merlot… no faking it’

In general, however, fashion is not something of which Moueix takes heed. He remains a staunch champion of Merlot in the face of less-than-popular consumer perceptions – and viticultural challenges.

‘We’re very much into 100% Merlot for most of our properties,’ he says. ‘That way, there's no faking it. It’s the expression of a terroir through one variety.’

‘You can plant Cabernet Sauvignon wherever you want and you're going to produce a good to very good wine. There are very few places in the world where Merlot thrives and produces such a great level of quality and complexity, across an entire region, as it does on the Right Bank.’

That is something worth championing, he argues. And yet… ‘Most Right Bank wines are 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc, but all people talk about is the Cab Franc. Why?’

The one place where the Moueix clan does focus on Cabernet is Napa Valley, where Edouard’s father Christian, who turns 80 this year, still manages the family’s Dominus Estate.

The project, begun in 1983, provides the family with an even broader perspective on the global market – and things are no rosier in California, Edouard says.

A quarter of the grapes in the Napa Valley went unpicked last year, he claims, with producers unwilling to buy from growers when they couldn’t be sure of selling the final wine.

‘It’s not a pretty time for the US’

Meanwhile, political tensions mean the $1bn Canadian market, as well as pockets elsewhere, has all but disappeared.

‘It’s not a pretty time for the US,’ he says. ‘They’re hurting. It’s a big concern. We’re going to release the 2023 Dominus soon, and I’m not quite sure what to do.’

There are challenges beyond financial and political upheaval, he adds. ‘Our biggest competition in the US is drugs.’

‘Cannabis?’ I ask.

‘That and Ozempic,’ he replies, of injectable appetite suppressant. ‘Ozempic is a massive problem.’

It all makes for something of a perfect storm. Yet this dynamo of the Bordeaux scene is far from downbeat.

‘Wine is such a magical product. It makes you feel better, makes you more social, brings inspiration to your conversation, loosens boundaries. What other product can offer that?’ Certainly not Ozempic.

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The 2025 Bordeaux vintage is already being hailed as another excellent year ending in ‘5’ that combines ripeness and structure with modern precision and purity.

Early tastings suggest the quality belies the demanding vintage conditions, which saw unrelenting heat and drought throughout the season.

While it's hard to summarise the entire vintage so early on, the first tastings reveal a few key elements:

• Expressive aromatic displays
• Ripe tannins: sometimes chewy and fleshy from clay soils; more direct and streamlined from limestone soils
• High acidities with low pHs
• Generally quite cool fruit profiles – not sunny or opulent like 2022
• Excellent integration of oak with reduced new oak in many cases
• Good concentration and intensity of flavour but without any heaviness
• Despite ripe tannins they're on the whole juicy, delicate and finessed
• Cabernet-heavy wines are relatively tight and compact at this early stage
• Stylistically, they resemble a combination of 2020 and 2016 although some say with the brightness and juiciness of 2023

Growers and consultants have spoken of exceptional concentration, aromatic purity and a freshness that contradicts the record-breaking heat.

Yet this potential brilliance comes with a stark caveat: yields are dramatically low.

The Gironde is expecting about 3.6 million hectolitres, 15% below the five-year average, with many estates reporting 28-40 hl/ha (the average in Pauillac is 30hl/ha) and some white plots down by as much as 50%.

This is largely as a direct consequence of the previous year's conditions, meaning bunch numbers were low and volumes were limited from the outset.

While this is disappointing from a revenue and economic viability aspect, it may have also been somewhat of a blessing, as the heat and drought conditions would not have been able to sustain larger quantities.

The growing season

The 2025 vintage was defined by earliness from the start. A milder-than-average winter led to budbreak around 25 March.

This was nearly two weeks ahead of the norm and the earliest start to a season since 1989.

Flowering was not only early but remarkably fast and uniform, arriving on 13-14 May under dry, sunny skies – a week ahead of average and with minimal coulure (berries not developing).

A water deficit started to appear in early June, bar storms that affected Pessac-Léognan on the 13th.

Veraison (the ripening and colouring of grapes) followed swiftly, beginning in mid July on the earliest Merlots and spreading evenly.

These phenological advances set the stage for one of the earliest harvests on record – a phrase I'm coming to use with more regularity.

Summer brought unrelenting heat. The month of June was one of the hottest ever recorded in France (second only to 2003 since records began in 1900), with weeks of temperatures above 35°C.

August intensified the pressure: 10 days above 35°C, peaking near or above 40°C in places (one parcel hit a scorching 42.8°C on 13 August).

However, overnight temperatures throughout the month were consistently cool, creating a high diurnal range, again differentiating the season from that of 2022 which experienced warm summer evenings.

Drought stress – but low alcohols

Rainfall was scarce until late August, creating nearly six weeks of significant drought that halted berry growth, sugar accumulation and phenolics, particularly on soils that had no water reserves.

This in turn meant resulting alcohols remained relatively low – certainly lower than what might have been expected – and are markedly different to the range seen in 2022.

Acidities were also kept high with many reds with low pHs; an average of 3.3pH on limestone and 3.6pH on clay.

A timely dose of rain arrived from 28 August into September (90–100mm in many Left Bank zones), easing vine stress, completing ripening and further moderating potential alcohol levels without dilution on well-drained terroirs.

Clay-limestone soils withstood the drought best; gravel and sandy sites suffered more.

The silver lining of this demanding vintage? Disease pressure was minimal.

Almost no frost damage occurred, and mildew – the bane of recent vintages – was notably less virulent thanks to the dry conditions.

Growers needed far fewer treatments than in 2024.

Rich pickings

Harvest began in mid-August for the dry whites, with classified-growth Sauvignon Blanc from 18–19 August, arriving healthy and picked before the main rains.

Merlot followed extraordinarily early – Château Lafleur started on 26 August, Château Troplong Mondot on 28 August with many others beginning on 3 September. The Cabernet Sauvignon harvest started in mid-September.

Sweet-wine picking in Sauternes and Barsac began in the last week of September and stretched into October.

Early botrytis onset allowed a relatively prompt start, and a late-October rally of glorious weather helped concentrate the crop.

While late-summer dryness limited uniform noble rot in some sectors (potentially favouring more elegant, less opulent styles than 2017 or 2020), many producers are enthusiastic about concentrated yet fresh sweet wines with purity and precision.

Harvest tastings showed striking concentration from small, thick-skinned berries. Early vat samples were deeply coloured with pronounced aromas.

Alcohol levels are notably moderate – mostly 12.5-13.5%, rarely nudging 14% – suggesting freshness and balance.

First tastings

So far I've tasted just shy of 200 wines from two early tastings in the past week.

The first at Laboratoire Rolland & Associés in Pomerol and the second Vignerons Consultants (Derenoncourt Consultants) in Sainte-Colombe.

I'm certainly impressed with the initial style and quality of wines that appear to be balanced and focused.

Of the reds, I've noticed two main styles: those that are more chewy and round; and those that are more straight and streamlined.

But, on the whole, there's no overt sunny aromatics or over-mature flavours, with good use of oak, bright acidities and juicy, pure fruit.

Three full weeks of estate visits as well as négociant and group tastings begin on 7 April, with my full report due at the beginning of May.

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The Bordeaux in-bottle tastings are always one of the year's highlights, and revisiting the 2023 vintage has been hugely enjoyable – more than 600 wines tasted over two months.

This year, the numbers tell a clear story: 110 wines gained one point from their En Primeur scores, 66 climbed two points and 19 jumped three points. Only 25 wines were downgraded, while the rest held steady.

This shows just how much can evolve during ageing, with the 2023s by and large showing even better in bottle than they did from barrel, gaining extra harmony, polish, flesh and approachability.

It’s such a great vintage to buy for pleasure right now, or for sensible cellaring. The wines combine charm and finesse with a lively, juicy core. Tannins feel serious yet refined, the acidity vibrant, and the fruit pure and expressive.

The wines are, on the whole, approachable and full of joy. They don't demand decades of patience yet still offer real structure and balance for those who want to tuck bottles away for between 15 years or more.

The First Growths: Poised and precise on both banks

The five Médoc First Growths, plus Cheval Blanc, all performed superbly in bottle. Most retained or improved on their en-primeur promise.

Château Margaux (99 points) climbed one point from its 98 En Primeur score and feels even more alive in bottle: wild roses and redcurrants on the nose, the palate smooth, supple and alive with silky tannins and perfect tension.

Château Lafite Rothschild (99 points) also gained one point, offering an effortless and seamless profile with bright acidity alongside graphite and wet stone touches.

Château Latour (99 points) had a one point up-score and is vibrant and focussed with high-energy acidity and mineral grip.

Château Haut-Brion (99 points), also one point higher, is one of the wines of the vintage – a potential 100-point wine in the future. It's rich yet cuddly, full of flesh, juice and charm.

Château Mouton Rothschild (98 points) sees no change from its En Primeur score and remains deep and rich with a cool fruit aspect and tons of finesse.

Not a first growth, but Château Palmer jumped two points to 99 delivering another captivating and utterly irresistible wine – another potential 100-pointer.

On the Right Bank, both Château Cheval Blanc and Château L'Eglise Clinet received two extra points to reach 99. They are both potential 100-point wines in the future, and two of the best 2023s.

Cheval feels radiant in bottle with herbal, floral, blackcurrant and violet notes, pristine fruit and flawless integration, while L'Eglise Clinet is just magical, with such great structure and concentration.

Château Figeac climbed one point to 98, showing a shiny, bright, vibrant profile, while Petrus held its 98 points, offering softness, charm and subtle power.

Château Ausone climbed one point to 97 and is ripe and bouncy, with charming perfume and a wildly enjoyable aspect already.

Other Left Bank and Right Bank top scorers

It has been especially gratifying to see so many top scorers climb in bottle, underlining how time has added extra radiance, harmony and approachability to these wines.

I purposefully never look at my En Primeur scores when retasting wines in bottle to retain as much impartiality as possible.

Outside the First Growths, Vieux Château Certan jumped one point to 99, while several others gained one point to reach 98, including Château Pavie, Château Troplong Mondot, Château Angélus, Château Montrose and Château Coutet.

A host of excellent wines climbed one point to reach 97: Château Cos d’Estournel, Château Pavie Macquin, Clos du Clocher, Château Smith Haut Lafitte, Château Haut-Bailly, Château Rauzan-Ségla and Château Brane-Cantenac.

Trotanoy and Clos Fourtet climbed two points to reach 97.

On the white side, Château Smith Haut Lafitte Blanc (97 points) and Château Haut-Brion Blanc (97 points) both gained one point, showcasing the vintage’s outstanding vibrancy and precision in the dry whites.

Left Bank highlights also include Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande (98 points) with delicate tannins and fruit purity.

Right Bank stars that retained 98 points include Château La Conseillante with amazing energy and focus, and Château Beauséjour Duffau-Lagarrosse offering mouthwatering succulence with a classic yet also playful feel.

Second wines

In terms of second wines, which often are available for the fraction of the Grand Vin price but offer similar taste profiles and earlier drinking windows, these particularly stood out: Dame de Trottevielle (94 points), Dame de Montrose (93 points), Croix de Beauséjour (93 points), La Chapelle de Haut-Bages Libéral (93 points), Echo de Lynch-Bages (93 points) and Réserve de Comtesse (93 points).

Also notable are Petit-Figeac (94 points) and Alter Ego de Palmer (94 points) - though priced higher than most seconds.

Verso de Haut-Batailley (92 points) and Fiefs de Lagrange (91 points) also impressed.

Dry whites and sweet wines

Dry whites are fantastic this year. Sauvignon Blanc excelled, producing vibrant, aromatic wines with citrus and stone fruit, herbs and racy acidity that keep everything fresh and lively. Château Smith Haut Lafitte Blanc (97 points) is pure and pristine with tension and a cooling finish. Château Haut-Brion Blanc (97 points) and Château La Mission Haut-Brion Blanc (97 points) show weight, minerality and drive.

Sémillon blends add creamy texture without heaviness, creating whites of real precision and longevity.

Also very impressive were Domaine de Chevalier Blanc (96 points), Château Cos d'Estournel Blanc (95 points), Les Champs Libres (95 points) and Château Pape Clément Blanc (95 points), Château La Garde Blanc (95 points) and Château La Louvière Blanc (94 points) which deliver weight, minerality and drive alongside

Sweet wines are bold yet beautifully balanced. Sauternes and Barsac combine concentration with freshness and lift. Château Coutet (97 points) is electric with spice and verve.

I particularly loved Château Sigalas Rabaud (95 points) – it showed wonderful vibrancy, bright acidity and a beautifully poised balance of honeyed fruit, candied peel and floral lift that made it incredibly moreish and expressive.

Château Bastor-Lamontagne (95 points) is a top value pick and Château de Rayne Vigneau (95 points) also delivered impressive purity and elegance.

Many are ready now but will develop beautifully over the next 20 years or more.

Other value standouts: hidden gems from both banks

Alongside well-known reputable and easy-to-find bottles, it's always nice to see new names or hidden gems appear in the list of great quality and value.

The following are all worth seeking out:

Château Laroque (95 points; St-Emilion Grand Cru Classé) Fresh and vibrant; about £18-£22

Château Grand Village (94; Bordeaux) Juicy and approachable; £18-£20

Château La Patache (94, Pomerol) Bright and crunchy; £19

Château Les Cruzelles (94, Lalande-de-Pomerol) Structured yet charming; £20

Château Haut-Bages Monpélou (94, Pauillac) Classic graphite grip; £20-£25

La Tour Carnet (94, Haut-Médoc 4ème Cru Classé) Consistent quality; £28-£32

Château Le Chatelet (94, St-Emilion Grand Cru Classé) Pure and focused; £45

Château Monregard la Croix (93, Pomerol) Smooth and glossy; £48

Château Ormes de Pez (92, St-Estèphe) Compact and cool; £26

Château Siran (93, Margaux) Floral and elegant; £32

Domaine Simon Blanchard Guitard (93, Montagne St-Emilion) Bright and focused €27

Château de Candale (93, St-Emilion Grand Cru) Good freshness; £25

Château Plince (93, Pomerol) Supple and moreish; £24

Château de Beau-Site (93, St-Estèphe) Vibrant and focussed; £24

La Chenade (92, Lalande de Pomerol) Juicy and approachable; £15

Les Hauts de Smith (92, Pessac-Léognan) Vibrant and precise; £22

Château D’Agassac (91, Haut-Médoc) Reliable and well-made; £21

Clos Lunelles (92, Côtes de Castillon) Streamlined and focused; £22-£26

Château Puygueraud (91, Francs Côtes de Bordeaux) Lovely depth; £10-£17

Château Alcée (93, Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux) Strong performer; £15

Château Clément Pichon (91, Haut-Médoc) Quietly confident; £15-£22

Château Charmail (91, Haut-Médoc) Full of personality; £15-£22

I have also written a separate article focusing on the Cru Bourgeois 2023s, which delivered some excellent value options in the vintage.

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The 2023 vintage has delivered another strong showing for Cru Bourgeois estates.

The first vintage under the new rules of the '2025 classification' (covering the 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027 vintages) sees the label sitting on a more selective group of 170 châteaux compared to 249 in 2020, with lots of highlights among them.

Alcohol levels hover around 13% to13.5%, acidity is bright, tannins fine and classic Médoc freshness shines through – exactly the digestible, food-friendly profile that makes these wines such reliable value.

Among the strongest performers, from a combination of individual estate visits and a large Cru Bourgeois blind tasting, was Château Le Crock (St-Estèphe Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel), 94 points, which stood out for its clarity and precision, pure fruit and tangy acidity. A benchmark success that offers wonderful drinkability at accessible prices (£25-£35 / $32 per bottle).

Two wines stood out at 93 points. Château Lilian Ladouys (St-Estèphe Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel) impressed with its bright profile, high acidity and mineral finish delivering a fun, focused wine with excellent structure and typicity. It is widely available at £17-£20 / $23 per bottle.

Château Arnaud (Haut-Médoc, Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel) also 93 points, offered a fresh and vibrant nose with a juicy and clean core of strawberry and red berry fruits. It has a soft yet lively and invigorating balance, plus a mineral, salty, wet-stone edge, high acidity and bright expression; wonderfully moreish with tension and drive (£15-£25 / $16-$30).

Château Malescasse (Haut-Médoc Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel) earned 92 points for its juicy palate with excellent texture, filling yet well-integrated tannins, cooling minty blueberry aspect, nuanced layers and a seamless, approachable style (£18-£28 / $22-$28).

Médoc shines for value

The Médoc in particular delivered well, with five regular Cru Bourgeois estates receiving 92 points and several others delivering highly attractive quality at even keener prices, making them excellent value picks for 2023.

These include Château Bourdieu, with its bright blackcurrant fruit; the harmonious texture of Château Saint-Bonnet and Château Tour Prignac's perfumed, fleshy palate and confident personality.

I loved the satisfying, filling texture of Château Vieux Robin and Vieux Château Landon's smooth, cooling blue fruit aspect.

These are generally available from £8-£20 / $12-$25 per bottle.

Conclusions

These estates highlight why 2023 rewards selective buying within the Cru Bourgeois category. Well-managed properties with recent consistency have produced approachable but also ageworthy reds full of Médoc energy rather than blockbuster weight.

With environmental standards now mandatory and the classification tightened, the 2023s represent some of the best value in Bordeaux right now – ideal for both early drinking and short- to medium-term cellaring.

Cru Bourgeois 2023: 26 top-scoring wines

All the Cru Bourgeois 2023 wines that scored 90 points

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Despite this year's spring hors Bordeaux campaign being the smallest in recent memory – shaped by ongoing market contraction – it still delivers a strong lineup of compelling wines and smart buys for collectors and enthusiasts.

The litany of recent challenges has produced fewer releases, smaller volumes, and a clear focus on proven, value-holding names.

While some familiar producers are absent and others have shifted dates, the selection remains high-quality and pragmatic.

Last year's March offering included around 80 wines; this time it's down to 56, with nine new entrants (many small-volume négociant exclusives) and five releases moved from September.

Notable newcomers include library releases from Domaine Paul Jaboulet Aîné’s Domaine de Roure (2015 and 2016 back vintages) and Domaine Ampeau’s Auxey-Duresses, Meursault and Pommard cuvées.

Shifts bring Viñedo Chadwick 2023 (now separated from Seña), Cloudburst’s Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, and the brilliant Nicolas Catena Zapata 2022 and Adrianna Mundus Bacillus Terrae.

Absences include high-profile names like Ceretto and Michele Chiarlo with their Barolo and Barbaresco bottlings, Dal Forno’s Amarone and Valpolicella, Alma’s Rioja and Giodo’s Brunello di Montalcino.

However, there are still some exciting newcomers including Chorus, a collaboration between Rioja’s Viñedos del Contino and Guillaume Thienpont of Pomerol’s Vieux Château Certan to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Spanish estate (it will be tasted later this week), as well as a fabulous Napa Valley wine from Annie Favia and Andy Erickson.

The wine comes from Oakville fruit – vineyards neighbouring Opus One – and is intended to be a value offering.

Château Latour's new releases

As ever, the campaign kicks off with the trio from Château Latour, released yesterday on 17 March.

This includes the 100-point Grand Vin 2019 – a vintage showing power married to elegance, Les Forts de Latour 2020 (supple and refined), and Pauillac de Château Latour 2021 (approachable yet structured).

These annual ex-cellar offerings remain a highlight, drawing attention amid the smaller overall selection.

Domaine Alexandre Bonnet’s La Forêt Blanc de Noirs (Côtes des Bar) returns for its second year on La Place after Lanson’s acquisition, offering excellent value.

Moët Hennessy’s Ao Yun and the Bordeaux/Rhône-inspired Odyssée from Pierre Graffeuille and Matthieu Dumarcher also stand out.

Italian excellence

Italy leads again with outstanding new vintages: Ornellaia 2023, Guado al Tasso 2023, Borgogno’s trio of 2020 Barolos (Liste, Annunziata, Cannubi), and Poggio di Sotto’s Brunello di Montalcino 2021 and Riserva 2020.

Market conditions

The fine wine sector continues navigating economic headwinds and unsettling political agendas as well as rising rates, Asian slowdowns, shifting habits, and stock overhangs.

Yet négociants emphasise flexibility: small, competitively priced releases in limited volumes to protect secondary-market stability offer opportunities.

Jean-Quentin Prats, general manager of Joanne Rare Wines, highlights the selective, focused approach: ‘There aren't a lot of new projects; just three this time. The new wine from the Favia team in Napa is exciting and ambitious – they bought the last unplanted area in Oakville, right next to Opus One, and hit full production with the 2023 vintage. They want this to be more mass-market and reach a younger audience.’

He also points to mature, ready-to-drink wines as a key strength of this year’s releases: ‘Domaine Ampeau highlights exactly what we've been doing to navigate market conditions – focusing on mature, ready-to-drink wines. Ampeau wines come from marvellous land and because of their strategy to only release wines when they are ready to drink, we now have access to those back vintages, which is unique in Burgundy.’

Prats remains pragmatic: ‘No doubt the market is tough, but we have thousands of clients. When other routes to market are slow to change, we know where to place the wine and we’ve been actively working on getting hold of older wines ready to drink.’

These small, competitively priced releases in limited volumes help protect secondary-market stability and create real opportunities for buyers.

Georgie's top picks

Score tables

March releases on La Place de Bordeaux 2026

About the tasting notes

All the releases were tasted by Georgie Hindle at Joanne in February 2025. Where the wines had already been tasted and scored by the relevant Decanter regional editor, or a commissioned contributor (James Button and Michaela Morris for Italy) those notes have been used.

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It’s a key year for critical reappraisals of Bordeaux 2016 and many top wines recently featured at a ‘10 years on’ tasting hosted by international merchant Bordeaux Index in London.

While scores for individual wines can’t be prejudged (look for a full report in Decanter’s Bordeaux supplement, published with the May issue), 2016 is widely considered a modern benchmark.

And yet price performance has been modest in a challenging market. A few wines have risen since en primeur release in 2017, notably Pichon Comtesse and Les Carmes Haut-Brion, but some were more than 10% below their debut level, said Bordeaux Index and its LiveTrade online trading platform (see table below).

Liv-ex, a global marketplace for the trade, said the ‘mid-prices’ on 31 out of 45 2016-vintage red wines in its Bordeaux 500 index were below their ‘ex-London’ release.

Its ‘mid-price’ reflects the halfway point between the lowest live offer and highest live bid (in pounds sterling).

Buyers stepping up to the plate

Bordeaux Index’s Geraint Carter described 2016 as ‘sensibly priced’ but also cheaper than some older five-star vintages, such as 2009, 2005 and 2000.

Prices have risen after bottoming-out in 2025, too, echoing wider positive signals in the market after a three-year downturn.

Liv-ex said: ‘With prices stabilising, there is an argument to be made that now is a time to gently lean into the 2016s.’

It highlighted Cheval Blanc and Haut-Brion as wines that looked to have ‘decisively stabilised’ and appeared to present lower risk.

Miles Davis, market expert at Vinum Fine Wines, said the merchant saw more buyers ‘stepping up to the plate’ in general.

While particularly noticeable on top-end Burgundy, he cited recent demand for Pichon Comtesse 2016. ‘I suspect [Bordeaux] 2016s will continue to sell well this year,’ Davis said.

Carter agreed: ‘There’s definitely [buyer] enthusiasm for it.’ With macroeconomic headwinds still buffeting the market, Davis said he didn’t expect prices necessarily to shoot up significantly in the near to medium term.

Still, he said the top wines would likely be more expensive in another 10 years.

The Bordeaux Index view

Fine wine & spirits specialist Bordeaux Index kindly sponsors this section of Decanter, and provides its view on the market here every issue. It can be found at bordeauxindex.com

‘Truly life-affirming’ Bordeaux

The 2016 tasting was a salutary reminder that while wine is often viewed as an asset, it’s nothing without an enthusiastic consumer at the end of the chain.

Tasting wines that so clearly sit among the greats, and seeing them met with genuine delight, is a far more visceral, and frankly more useful, metric than any spreadsheet or analytical framework.

It was fascinating to taste a collection of wines that straddled the stylistic shift from the ‘Parker era’ of concentration, power and majesty to the contemporary ‘infusion phase’, in which aromatics, finesse and energy take precedence.

That framing may be slightly contrived, but there’s no denying that the wines’ precision and clarity make them unmissable.

After strong gains since summer 2025, the market position of the top 2016 clarets looks sensible relative to their peers rather than obviously cheap. That said, buyers today are less motivated by relative value alone, and the vintage’s ‘musthave’ status could yet drive prices higher.

Fortunately, 2016 was a generous crop and consumption so far has been limited, so availability shouldn’t be overly constrained.

Financially, those who bought en primeur may be questioning some choices. Those who tasted the wines, however, were certainly not thinking in such terms; they were congratulating themselves on owning something truly life- affirming.

In the long run, we know which sentiment matters most.

Further signs of market recovery

Headline auction house figures have added to signs of a renewal in interest from buyers at the top end of the fine wine market, despite the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty.

Sotheby’s said total wine and spirits sales – auction and private – hit US$127.5m (£93.5m) in 2025, up 12% on 2024.

It’s the fourth-highest total in the department’s history, behind 2023 ($159m), 2022 ($150m) and 2021 ($132m).

‘This success [in 2025] has been driven by a truly international buyer base, strong growth in new collectors, and our depth of expertise in presenting landmark singleowner collections,’ said Nick Pegna, global head of Sotheby’s wine and spirits.

Spirits sales reached $21.5m in 2025. Burgundy delivered the highest-priced wine lots, from the Hospices de Beaune charity sale to a 12-bottle case of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Romanée-Conti Grand Cru 1990.

The latter sold for HK$3.5m (US$449,890), including buyer’s premium, in Hong Kong in September (high estimate: HK$2.2m).

Auction house Zachys was also upbeat in its Year in Review: ‘Throughout 2025, Zachys has observed continued and steady market recovery following the post-pandemic slump.’

The average hammer price of top lots has steadily increased, it said. Meanwhile, Christie’s earlier reported a ‘positive shift in collector confidence and participation’ in Asia in autumn 2025, spanning wine, handbags, watches and jewellery.

Sales from live auctions during its ‘Hong Kong luxury week’ in November hit HK$987m (US$127.5m), up 27% year-on-year.

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A venerable St-Emilion property, Château Cheval Blanc has long been considered one of the leading estates in Bordeaux.

This was recognised as far back as 1955, when it and Château Ausone were the two estates recognised as Premier Grand Cru Classé ‘A’ in the inaugural St-Emilion classification.

However, in 2021 both Cheval Blanc and Ausone excused themselves from the 2022 classification citing issues with the judging criteria; which had been a major bone of contention in 2012.

Both relinquished the top classification they had held for 66 years but it’s doubtful it has harmed either property’s standing in the eyes of collectors. Both properties are now classified as ‘St-Emilion Grand Cru’.

In recent years Cheval Blanc has deftly navigated the turbulent waters of en primeur, emerging as one of the more consistent sellers in a dwindling market.

It has fully committed itself to ‘l’agroécologie’, implementing numerous environmentally-friendly practices at the estate, such as encouraging a polyculture, practicing agroforestry and ending ploughing to reduce soil compaction.

Secondary market overview

Over its last 10 vintages, Cheval Blanc has an average Liv-ex Market Price of £4,243 (per 12x75cl) and an average score from Decanter of 97-points.

In this regard its averages compare quite favourably with the first growths of the Left Bank – which we looked at last year.

It is a key component of the Right Bank 500 index compiled by fine wine marketplace Liv-ex and its component wines have largely seen positive performances since the start of the year.

However, the fine wine secondary market as a whole has been in a severe downturn in recent years and many prices have softened from the heights they achieved in the frenzy of the lockdown-driven bull run of 2020-2022.

The index as a whole has taken a step back since it hit its peak in January 2023, declining by 30.8% to September 2025. It has rallied a little since then but is still 29.4% below where it was at its highest point.

Recent analysis published in Decanter, suggests the possibility of a limited market recovery in 2026. There were signs of stability in the second half of 2025 and prices have stabilised in many areas.

However, the recent US-Israeli military action in the Gulf, may yet send another spasm of uncertainty through a bruised market.

Iran's threat to close the Strait of Hormuz will have severe repercussions in oil markets, and that volatility usually spreads to stock markets and therefore assets.

Both the UK and US stock markets were in flux this week as oil prices spiked – though the jump was not as severe as it was after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

A conflict with no foreseeable endpoint may put the brakes on even limited market recovery, but does potentially gift slow-to-act collectors an extended chance to keep scouring the secondary market for potential buying opportunities.

Cheval Blanc vintages

Looking at our chart above, we can see that there are two older vintages that weigh heavily on Cheval Blanc’s books: 2015 and 2016.

Both renowned vintages, they are priced well above the estate’s 10-year average: with a Liv-ex Market Price of £6,385 and £5,900 per case respectively.

However, although they are well reviewed wines, they are not the top-scorers according to Decanter.

Those honours go to the 2019 and 2023, which Bordeaux Editor, Georgie Hindle, both rated 99-points; the 2023 most recently at her in-bottle tasting of that vintage.

Both are currently available at considerable discounts to either the 2015 or 2016.

The 2019 was extremely well-priced on release and has gained 7.8% in value over the last five years according to Liv-ex. It currently has a Market Price of £4,850 according to Liv-ex, which is the third-highest, though still 20-30% less than the 2015 and 2016.

Therefore, the 2023 – at £3,779 per dozen – represents the best value by far, with a discount of 68% on the market price of the 2015 (97-points).

Another vintage of interest is the 2020. It has 98-points from Hindle – the same as the 2016 and 2022 vintages – but is currently available for £3,680 for a 12-bottle case, 60% less than the 2016.

According to Liv-ex, its price has also slipped -1.6% since the start of the year, which only helps to highlight the value it currently offers versus its peers.

Finally, for collectors perhaps merely seeking to get a foot in the door, the 2021 vintage presents a possible opportunity.

Rated 96-points – so just below the 10-year score average – its current case price of £2,835 is 50% below Cheval’s average price. The 2021 has also declined -5.5% in value year-to-date according to Liv-ex’s figures.

Château Cheval Blanc: Selected tasting notes

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Leader: Amy Wislocki, Magazine Editor

Freedom to innovate

I love the mental image of Bo Barrett (See: The Man at Montelena), aged 18, flying over California’s cattle ranches, vineyards and citrus groves with his father Jim, who was looking for an agricultural project to invest in.

And so Chateau Montelena was born, just a few years before its 1973 Chardonnay went on to triumph at the Judgement of Paris. It’s partly due to that victory that Napa is where it is today, firmly part of the fine wine establishment.

And yet, as Montelena president Matt Crafton points out, Napa must remain ‘forward-looking, free to innovate, aspirational’. It’s good to be part of a settled community of wine producers, but the danger of that, he says, is ‘groupthink’.

It’s when winemakers have the confidence to plough a different furrow – even (or especially) in regions where regulations are more restrictive – that the real excitement occurs. Château Latour-Martillac’s new white wine, for example (See Editors' Picks). With winemakers showing such open-mindedness in the most established of wine regions, we owe it to them as wine drinkers to be equally open-minded.

In my glass this month

No danger of those profiled in this month’s feature on nomadic winemakers (See: The Nomads) falling victim to groupthink! Among them is Darren Smith, who as well as making wine writes the occasional feature for Decanter. I went along to meet him when he showed some of his wines in London. His old-vine País from Chile’s Itata (£32 tfwath.com) was so individual, so authentic, and so emblematic of freedom to innovate that every sip thrilled.

Inside Decanter magazine's March 2026 issue

In Focus

Interview: The man at Montelena Fifty years after the Judgement of Paris, Jonathan Cristaldi meets Chateau Montelena’s Bo Barrett

20 top buys... Spring whites at £20 and under David Williams’ high street picks for the new season

Bordeaux 2023 in bottle Having retasted the 2023 clarets, Georgie Hindle offers her thoughts on the vintage, along with 30 top tips

Brunello di Montalcino latest releases Michaela Morris reports on the 2021s and 2020 Riservas

The nomads Marianna Hunt meets four travelling winemakers, and discovers why they’re right to roam

North Adriatic: Wine without borders Miquel Hudin looks at what links Italy, Croatia and Slovenia

Tasting: Disrupting the status quo Everyone perceives wine differently. Tim Hanni MW explains why

Spirits

Distilled Spirits news & cocktails

Rise of the Dirty Martini Alicia Miller on an enduring classic

Food & travel

What to pair with Malaysian food David Sly’s matches for bold flavours

Travel: Central Otago: A wine lover’s guide Ash Bhardwaj visits one of New Zealand’s premier wine regions

Learning

Books etc Sophie Thorpe presents a selection of books about sake

Wine wisdom Expert advice to help you on your ongoing wine journey

Buying guide

Introduction

Editors’ picks Decanter staff share highlights from their recent tastings

Panel tasting: Alsace Grand Cru Riesling Two vintages a decade apart serve up two Exceptional and eight Outstanding wines; 98 wines tasted

Panel tasting: South African red blends Combinations of traditional grape varieties shine; 86 wines tasted

Expert’s choice: Light South American reds Ines Salpico looks beyond the region’s big bruisers

Weekday wines Decanter’s tasting team brings you 25 top picks, ready to drink now and priced at £30 or less

Weekend wines Priced £30-£60, seven standout buys to impress

DWWA 2025 Italy for the cellar

Collecting & investing

Marketwatch Auction news and new releases, plus the opportunities offered by Bordeaux’s 2016 vintage

Regulars

Welcome

Writing this month Meet four of the authors who contributed to this issue

News The latest from the wine world

The brief Ideas and inspiration

Andrew Jefford’s column

Guest column Due to climate change, the future of winemaking is white, argues Benjamin Lewin MW

The Ethical Drinker The wine world needs to examine its relationship with water, says Linda Johnson-Bell

On the rack: Daniel Boulud The French chef and restaurateur shares some of his vinous exploits

Subscribe to Decanter print magazine and enjoy great savings today

Get access to this issue and previous issues dating back to 2013 with the Decanter Premium app

Short and long-term pleasure

Don’t sleep on the Bordeaux 2023 vintage – it’s brilliant.

The best wines display charm, finesse and a lively, juicy core.

It’s a vintage that, on the whole, delights from the very first sip – generous, approachable and so delicious that it feels like the first truly ‘modern’ Bordeaux vintage where the wines are ready to bring joy right now.

You won’t have to wait long, if at all, for most of them, yet ageing won’t be a problem either.

Bordeaux continues to demonstrate the value of variation between vintages.

This isn’t a blockbuster vintage like the powerhouse 2022, and it could be tempting to overlook 2023 in the shadow of its predecessor.

But in its freshness, suavity and elegance, 2023 can absolutely rival 2019 and 2020 – and in several instances, individual wines feel more balanced, more poised and more terroir-transparent than their 2022 counterparts.

You can taste the gravel of the Médoc, the limestone of St-Emilion, the rich clay of Pomerol.

This report reflects sentiments from tasting almost 600 wines now that they’re in the bottle, and showcases a small selection of my personal highlights from a vintage I adore.

Balance and restraint

The season was defined by two halves.

A wet, rainy spring delivered severe mildew pressure – particularly challenging for organic producers – and required rigorous selection and sorting that one winemaker described as having ‘never been more thorough’.

A dry summer, punctuated by a late heatwave, gave way to ideal September conditions that permitted precise, unhurried picking.

Had the weather not shifted decisively to dryness and warmth in the second half of the season, the vintage would have taken a markedly different course – likely leaner and less complete.

As it was, full phenolic maturity was achieved without excess and winemakers responded with restraint and sophistication.

Lessons learned from the preceding years are clearly visible in the gentle extractions, measured oak influence and increased use of concrete containers and amphorae in order to preserve fruit purity.

The result is a vintage in which the winemaker’s hand is present yet unobtrusive, allowing terroir and estate identity to shine with unusual clarity.

Immediate appeal

The reds are medium-bodied, frequently retaining the gloss and shine they showed en primeur.

Bright cassis, raspberry, plum, floral and mineral notes are lifted by mouthwatering acidity. Tannins are fine yet serious – some approaching the firmness of 2010 – yet the pronounced freshness ensures they never feel too austere or overwhelming.

Structure is in place for extended ageing, but the wines are so juicy and mouthwatering that many are already highly enjoyable.

Pomerol’s clay soils deliver flesh, ripeness and plush tannins – Vieux Château Certan and L’Eglise-Clinet (see recommendations) are outstanding.

St-Emilion’s limestone lends crystalline minerality and tension – Château Cheval Blanc is radiant; the Médoc’s gravel brings classic definition and poise – Château Palmer is seamless, Haut-Brion aristocratic and precise.

While there is much variation in style and character, time in barrel does seem to have levelled the playing field somewhat in terms of these wines’ drinkability.

Whites are frequently exceptional. Sauvignon Blanc excelled, producing vibrant, aromatic wines full of citrus, stone fruit, herbs and racy acidity.

On the sweet side, Sauternes and Barsac are bold yet finely balanced, with botrytis concentration offset by freshness.

Above all, the 2023 reds are wines of immediacy and pleasure. They are the kind of bottles that will, I think, be reached for repeatedly and finished without hesitation.

The traditional Bordeaux rule of a decade in the cellar simply doesn’t apply here.

Many are ready now, yet the combination of acidity and tannin ensures they will develop with grace over 15 to 25 years or more.

As one winemaker remarked: ‘In 10 or 20 to 30 years, these may be the wines people opt for in preference to 2022.’

The long-term verdict remains open, but the potential is evident.

A welcome boost

Bordeaux continues to navigate difficult commercial waters.

The broader wine world faces real challenges – market shifts, economic pressure, climatic uncertainty – and few estates have been untouched.

Yet the 2023s stand as a compelling reminder of Bordeaux’s capacity for excellence: thrilling quality, pure enjoyment and genuine excitement.

They offer a welcome note of optimism as we look towards the much-anticipated 2025 en primeur tastings in April.

No appellation claims outright supremacy in 2023, though Pomerol often shows particular generosity, St-Emilion limestone evokes crystalline tension, Margaux floral refinement, St-Julien and Pauillac classical structure, and Pessac-Léognan whites outstanding vibrancy.

Second wines and value-driven bottlings are also successful, especially from the Right Bank satellites.

Prices have moderated since the more exuberant 2022 campaign, so genuine opportunities exist in this year when being selective is critical.

The wines below represent outstanding quality and drinkability, some for near-term enjoyment, others built for the long term.

NB: We’ll be highlighting 10 outstanding ‘value’ wines from the 2023 vintage in this year’s annual Bordeaux guide, to be published alongside the May 2026 issue

The Hindle pick: An early taste of 30 Bordeaux 2023 reds

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It had been over 15 years since I last sat down with Hubert de Boüard, the man synonymous with Château Angélus and one of Bordeaux’s most influential figures.

In that time, Angélus achieved Premier Grand Cru Classé (A) status before dramatically withdrawing from the classification altogether in 2022.

Now, over lunch at Bob Bob Ricard in the City of London, the focus was not on Angélus, but on Le Plus de la Fleur de Boüard – the flagship single-vineyard wine from his Lalande-de-Pomerol estate.

Le Plus de la Fleur de Boüard

The lunch centred on three vintages of Le Plus de la Fleur de Boüard, a 100% Merlot drawn from a 6ha parcel of 70-80-year-old vines growing on a bed of large, heat-retaining stones reminiscent of Châteauneuf-du-Pape with 15-20% clay.

First isolated in 2000 and bottled in tiny quantities (around 4,000 bottles annually thanks to a yield of 15 to 20hl/ha on average), this wine stands apart for its richness and concentration – even in lesser years – due primarily to the vine age and the extra 'warmth' from the stones.

The wines are aged for 33 months in barrels including 18 months on fine lees in 100% French oak with no fining or filtration.

The 2016 showed almost tropical aromas of grapefruit and pineapple, and brought to mind the legendary wines of Le Pin in neighbouring Pomerol.

Being frank, alongside the 2011 and 2013, there is something incredibly special about this wine.

Rarely do you find such interesting and concentrated examples from so called 'lacklustre vintages' outside the very top tier of the region – but these I can assure you, are that.

Beyond Merlot: Consumer-driven choices

De Boüard also shared the estate’s Chardonnay (Vin de Pays de L'Atlantique), a wine born from both consumer demand and personal preference.

'When we send 10 cases of Chardonnay and 10 of Sauvignon Blanc to our summer house, the Chardonnay is always finished and there are always a few cases of Sauvignon Blanc remaining,' he remarked.

A Burgundy-trained winemaker, he decided to plant Chardonnay in 2016 because, 'it’s what we want to drink' and because it resonates more strongly with people than Sauvignon does on his terroir.

Syrah, Grenache and a Provençal-style rosé are also produced here, all bottled as Vin de France in response to what consumers actually want. This is 'new generation' Bordeaux in action.

A farmer first

De Boüard describes himself as 'a farmer first, winemaker second'.

That philosophy drove the creation of Le Plus: one parcel that consistently produced richer, more distinctive wines, so it was separated out despite his general aversion to single-cuvée bottlings.

The large stones warm the soil, helping the old vines achieve ripeness and depth even in challenging seasons.

To further their ambitions to exhibit the quality and value of this relatively fledgling estate (purchased in 1998) to the world, they have developed one of the first genuinely all encompassing 'oeno-tourism' operations in Bordeaux.

When you wind your way up the hill from Pomerol to Lalande a Pomerol and into La Fleur de Boüard close to the village of Néac, there is far more to discover than initially meets the eye.

The estate visit and tasting are a given but beyond that there is a restaurant which not only serves all the wines by the glass, but where the simple menu is exceptionally well executed.

If you are not in a rush to leave there are three rooms above the restaurant, as well as two larger villa style apartments, a swimming pool and a hot tub.

I mention this not as an advertorial, but it strikes me that this really is the future of Bordeaux, where they can show the world first hand, how stunning the wines can be and, next to many fine wine regions, demonstrate superb value.

A candid conversation

Over lunch, de Boüard spoke openly about the 'depressed' state of the fine wine market – not something one often hears from proprietors at the upper end of Bordeaux – and his commitment to keeping prices fair for consumers, especially given the obvious quality.

He was refreshingly frank about Bordeaux’s broader challenges – demand, global popularity of the region, and of course the ultimate political hot potato, the En Primeur system.

The conversation was not strictly off the record, but I will summarise by saying I was slightly in awe of the opinions of a man who is evidently well travelled through the world of wine.

He came across as someone who knows full well how other regions are succeeding, as well as how the global economy is not, and is implementing procedures and structures that are not only empathetic to the consumer but revolutionary among so many of the 'experienced generation' of the Bordelais.

The future of La Fleur de Boüard is one that I shall follow with great interest.

Le Plus de la Fleur de Boüard tasted

The wines are listed white then red in vintage order youngest to oldest

Valandraud Blanc stands as one of Bordeaux’s most distinctive and collectible white wines so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to attend a landmark tasting of every available vintage since the first in 2003 with the estate’s technical team and owner Jean-Luc Thuenvin last year.

Known for shaking up the Right Bank’s red wine scene in the 1990s with his garage-wine ethos, Thunevin turned his attention to whites in the early 2000s, proving that innovation extends beyond Merlot-dominated reds.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 20 vintages of Château Valandraud Blanc

From red revolutionary to white innovator

Inspired by prestigious whites like those from Château Mouton Rothschild and Château Margaux that he was selling at the time, and recalling St-Emilion’s pre-AOC history of white plantings (there’s historical references to ‘Sémillon de St-Emilion’ as early as the 18th century), Thunevin replanted parcels with white varieties.

The story thus begins with plantings in 2001 and 2002 on clay-limestone soils in Saint-Genès-de-Castillon and later Lalande-de-Fronsac – parcels technically outside the St-Emilion appellation, if there were ever to be a specific white designation, but close enough to share similar terroir.

Plantings and origins

The first vintage arrived in 2003, with just 585 bottles produced under the original label of Valandraud Blanc No.1. A second wine, initially No.2 and later Virginie de Valandraud Blanc, followed in 2004. Both labels changed to their current form in 2010.

Over time, the project expanded to around three hectares all under the Bordeaux Blanc AOC.

Early blends leaned on Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon, but Sauvignon Gris – planted from 2002 onward (going into the blend for the first time in 2007) – gradually became central.

By 2014, it formed the majority in many vintages, lending a distinctive signature: aromatic intensity, exotic fruit notes (think pineapple and lychee), a textured richness (sometimes oily/slightly waxy) and a full body.

The wines also have consistently elevated alcohol levels due to the goal of full grape maturity (often straying into 15% ABV), although balanced by low pHs and extreme freshness.

The stylistic attributes combined with high-density planting in places (up to 13,330 vines/ha in some plots before adjustments), set Valandraud Blanc apart from more classical Bordeaux whites.

The vineyards total 3ha for both wines – 1.8ha in St Genès de Castillon and 1.24ha in Lalande de Fronsac.

Viticulture and winemaking

Viticulture follows eco-responsible principles, now HVE3 certified (with HVE4 targeted). Permanent grass cover, green manuring, and careful copper use preserve aromatic precursors in the grapes.

Harvesting occurs by hand in small 8kg crates over multiple passes through the vineyard for optimal ripeness, with grapes chilled before gentle pneumatic pressing lasting at least five hours.

Fermentation starts in vat before moving to barrel, with no malolactic fermentation to retain tension with a light addition of sulphur at the end.

Ageing lasts eight to 10 months on fine lees (another reason for its distinctive personality) with bâtonnage (stirring) until spring: typically 80% in new barrels (225–500l) for structure and 20% in terracotta amphorae (introduced in 2019, especially for Sauvignon Gris to enhance fruit purity).

Blending for both wines draws from around 40 lots, selected by variety, harvest date, and press quality.

Signature and style

The result is a wine of real personality: often intense and opulent yet precise, with layered and perfumed aromatics of white flowers, peach, spiced pears citrus, and exotic notes from Sauvignon Gris, underpinned by minerality and vibrant acidity.

Honeysuckle, wet stones, struck flint with nectarines, lemon tart, white pepper and dried herbs all allied to a decadently oily texture.

The wines can be both crisp and refreshing as well as rich with a moreish quality.

Early vintages (2003–2010) show more classical maturity, with some evolving into honeyed, creamy profiles, while later ones benefit from the Sauvignon Gris dominance and modern techniques like amphorae ageing and late pruning (from 2020 to counter frost risks).

Vintage evolution and standouts

A remarkable vertical tasting back to the inaugural 2003 vintage revealed a consistent thread of quality and evolution. The wine’s signature emerges strongly from around 2014 onward, with greater aromatic lift, exotic fruit depth, and crystalline freshness.

Standouts include vintages like 2019 (vibrant, complete, with amphora-influenced purity), 2016 (complex, zingy, mineral-edged despite no Sémillon), and recent ones like 2021 and 2023 (electric poise and mouthwatering tension). Even challenging years, such as frost-affected 2017, delivered lifted, floral expressions.

Given the limited production there was no 2004, only one bottle of 2005 (the last at the estate) and no 2012 – it was all sold.

Virginie de Valandraud Blanc offers a more approachable take – crisp, citrus-driven, and excellent value – while the grand vin remains the collector’s focus, produced in tiny quantities (3,000–5,900 bottles annually).

Thunevin’s vision, supported by Murielle Andraud, viticulturist Paul-Marie Morillon, Christophe Lardiere in the vines and winemaking team including Rémi Dalmasso, has created a white Bordeaux that challenges conventions.

Château Valandraud Blanc may lack the historical weight of its red counterpart, but its cult status as one of Bordeaux’s most unique and compelling whites is undeniable.

Château Valandraud Blanc: 20 vintages tasted

Tasting notes are in vintage order youngest to oldest

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More than 80 Bordeaux 2016 wines featured in a recent ‘10 Years On’ tasting hosted by international merchant Bordeaux Index in London, attended by producers, critics and journalists.

Classified Left Bank estates, including first growths, were joined by top Right Bank names, from Lafleur, Le Pin, Petrus and Trotanoy to Angélus and Cheval Blanc.

Bordeaux 2016 reds have long been considered a modern benchmark with particularly strong ageing potential, thanks to a combination of high tannin, generous fruit and freshness. 

Early promise translated to high scores during en primeur tastings in spring 2017, broadly confirmed in-bottle 18 months later. Some appellations also reported the highest average yields since 2006. 

While a full report and tasting notes from the 10 Years On tasting will be published in Decanter magazine’s Bordeaux guide in June, enthusiasm among producers, at least, appeared undimmed.

Omri Ram, winemaker at Château Lafleur, said he considers 2016 ‘one of the greatest vintages ever done in Bordeaux.’

He added, ‘At Lafleur, I think it’s going to be one of the greatest’. He said the wine’s high (yet ‘super fine’) tannin and ‘huge amount of energy’ means it is still young as the 10-year mark approaches. 

Bordeaux 2016: From zero to hero?

And yet, Ram explained that Bordeaux 2016 wasn’t always considered destined for greatness. A very wet spring led to mildew pressure and some producers feared the worst, before a mostly hot and dry summer helped to change the picture.

Ram described 2016 as the first of a new type of ‘hybrid’ vintage in Bordeaux, breaking with an established pattern of viewing years as dominated by singular weather traits.

It was a steep learning curve, and hard work. ‘We were confused, but the vines were definitely confused,’ Ram said. 

‘They started in comfort [but] by the beginning of summer they switched into this very extreme heat and dry sun. You had these big lazy vines that had to run a marathon until harvest.’

Managing the canopy was key, added Ram, who credited big developments in viticulture in Bordeaux with helping to deliver the vintage.

After harvest, Lafleur team members expected something good but weren’t prepared for what greeted them. ‘The first time we actually understood there was something huge here – like, “wow, great vintage” – was after malolactic [fermentation].’ 

Bordeaux 2016 today

There was a good deal of enthusiasm for 2016 during the recent 10 Years On tasting, even if some wines remained relatively tight at this stage. Some producers, such as Christian Seely of ‘super’ second growth Château Pichon Baron, also highlighted different interpretations of the vintage.

A 2025 Decanter expert panel tasting found high extraction on some Médoc 2016 reds, although praised overall quality with 11 rated ‘outstanding’.

Decanter’s Bordeaux correspondent, Georgie Hindle, last year gave 100 points to Château Latour 2016 after it was released for the first time in March.

While surrounding vintages also offer plenty to enjoy, 2016 carries a certain symbolism. Matthew O’Connell, Co-CEO of Bordeaux Index and the LiveTrade online trading platform, described it as ‘the start of a golden age of winemaking’ in the region.

Châteaux reporting individual landmarks included Margaux-appellation second growth Durfort-Vivens, for which 2016 was the first year of both organic and biodynamic certification.

An uncertain market 

Bordeaux has faced a particularly troubled time on the market in recent years. Will 2016 pierce the clouds? 

O’Connell said he expected good demand amid a renewed focus on the vintage, and highlighted the wines’ value versus other five-star, peer vintages. 

Miles Davis, market expert at merchant Vinum Fine Wines, said in his February market report, ‘We [recently] sold a decent chunk of the very highly regarded Pichon Lalande 2016, in bottles and large formats, and I suspect 2016s will continue to sell well this year.’

Bordeaux Index’s Geraint Carter, who helped provide price analysis on the vintage for Decanter magazine’s Market Watch in the upcoming March issue, added, ‘There’s definitely [buyer] enthusiasm for it.’

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