Both 2023 and 2024 had their challenges for winemakers, but that doesn’t mean these vintages are void of great value-for-money wines.

This year’s value picks focus on chillable, quaffable annatas rather than bottles which rise above their station.

But as a reminder that Chianti Classico offers amazing value throughout its ranks, in addition to the entry-level annatas I've also included one Riserva and one Gran Selezione that won’t break the bank.

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With a young generation embracing it, and historical estates continuing to defend it, Chianti Classico Riserva remains resilient to the vagaries of vintage, climate and trends.

Even as former Riservas continue to be upgraded to Gran Selezione, Chianti Classico's middle tier is still seeing its share of new wines.

Sofia Ricasoli, who represents the 33rd generation of the region’s most legendary wine family, has chosen Riserva for her one and only Chianti Classico made under her own label.

‘It’s a more historical category than Gran Selezione’, she rationalises. Launched with the 2021 vintage, Innesto means ‘graft’ and references a return to her deep roots after studying and practising law, while at the same time looks toward the future.

Challenges aplenty

Aware but undeterred by the myriad of challenges facing the wine industry today, Ricasoli asserts, ‘The greatest is climate change – more so than market or economic conditions.’

Indeed, climate challenges were front and centre in 2023, with a significant reduction in quantities due to peronospora (downy mildew), hail and drought.

After losing 80% at his Monte Bernardi estate, Michael Schmeltzer essentially folded what are typically three separate bottlings into a single soulful Riserva. Other estates didn’t bottle a Riserva at all.

The Riserva 2023s that were bottled reveal some issues managing ripeness and volatile acidity. Several examples were already fully evolved, contradicting the spirit of the category.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my top picks come from the region’s cooler pockets: Castello di Querceto in the upper reaches of Greve, Castello di Volpaia in the fresh, forested subdistrict of Radda, and Castellaccio’s Lama dei Cortacci above the hamlet of Lamole at a lofty 700 metres.

I would recommend drinking these over the next five to eight years. San Giusto a Rentennano’s reliably excellent Le Baròncole is an exception and needs more time in bottle.

Chianti Classico's up-and-comers

Read the rest of Michaela's Chianti Classico analysis:

2022 and other late releases

2022 is shaping up to be a far more consistent vintage than 2023. Revisiting some 2022s released last year alongside some 2022s debuting this year reveals a highly successful cohort.

Combining density with grip and zip, they offer a solid decade of drinking potential. Among this year's releases, L'Erta di Radda and Val delle Corti are highlights, while Podere Ferrale is yet another promising new name.

Meanwhile, the category's stalwarts continue to live up to their formidable reputations, highlighted by Castello di Monsanto’s vivacious 2022, Badia a Coltibuono’s refined 2021, and Castell’in Villa’s intricate, age-worthy 2020.

Michaela's pick of Chianti Classico Riserva

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Elevated from Riserva to Gran Selezione for the 2023 vintage, Maurizio Alongi’s standout Vigna Barbischio proudly touts the UGA (Unità Geografiche Aggiuntive) of Gaiole – one of eight subzones now permitted on Gran Selezione labels.

Similarly, Cigliano di Sopra has debuted its first ever Gran Selezione, from a single vineyard in San Casciano planted in 2016.

Maddalena Fucile admits that it’s unusual to declare this lofty status for fledging vines – for context, the estate’s Riserva features 50-year-old plantings.

‘If a vineyard is born with the right stuff, it can be a Gran Selezione even from its youth,’ she reasons.

I was also charmed by Il Poggiolino’s resinous Le Balze and Poggio al Sole’s glossy Casasilia. Both hail from San Donato in Poggio and offer satisfying drinking over the next decade.

As the majority of 2023 Gran Seleziones won’t be released until at least next year, I will reserve final judgement for now – however, several estates including Tregole and Castello di Ama have already indicated that they will skip the vintage for their Gran Selezione.

And while Rocca delle Macìe did produce its Fizzano Il Crocino label, the family chose to use the fruit from their prized plot usually destined for their flagship Sergio Zingarelli bottling in the Riserva instead.

2022 and 2021: Perfect scores and changing rules

The 2022 and 2021 Gran Selezione releases cast a brilliant spotlight on the classification, offering cellarworthy gems promising 10 to 15 years of evolution.

Notably, Castello di Ama’s magnificent Bellavista 2022 earns the distinction of receiving my first ever 100-point score for a Chianti Classico.

Enjoy its longstanding signature blend of 80% Sangiovese and 20% Malvasia Nera while it lasts, as it will soon be tweaked to conform with revised regulations due to come into effect for the 2027 vintage, which stipulate a minimum of 90% Sangiovese.

Furthermore, because the updated protocol for Gran Selezione will prohibit Merlot altogether, the estate has withdrawn its La Casuccia bottling from the Chianti Classico denomination as of the 2022 vintage.

An 80/20 blend of Sangiovese and Merlot, it is now labelled as a Toscana IGT.

Marco Pallanti, who launched the wine in 1985 and was instrumental in establishing the Gran Selezione category, expresses regret.

‘I have always believed that the best wines of the zone should be Chianti Classico,’ he states. While a loss for the denomination, La Casuccia will find itself in good company among the region’s exceptional Super Tuscans.

The majority of Gran Seleziones today are made exclusively from Sangiovese, having been conceived relatively recently or evolved with foresight of the category’s direction.

Castello di Fonterutoli’s Badiòla is one such example, and rings out in 2022 as a clear reference point for Radda’s cool, radiant and racy profile.

Expanding horizons & new projects

Fully embracing the UGA endeavour, Antinori’s new trio of Gran Selezione from San Casciano, Castellina and Gaiole shine for the second consecutive year.

In other news, the company announced that it has taken over management of Castello di Cacchiano, a historic property once part of the original Ricasoli empire. Expect a facelift there.

With the 2022 vintage, Fèlsina marks its 60th anniversary. Throughout this time, the Poggiali family have been steadfast champions of Sangiovese.

Their Colonia wonderfully captures the wild, earthy sunbaked allure of Castelnuovo Berardegna.

From the same UGA, San Felice’s second vintage of La Pieve combines structural and fruit richness in an approachable package.

Now under the direction of Carlo De Biasi, San Felice is embracing regenerative agriculture. Through the LIFE VitiCaSe project, they have established four pilot vineyards, in collaboration with Castello di Albola and Tenute Ruffino, serving as an educational hub for improving soil health and increasing carbon capture capacity.

Other noteworthy nascent Gran Selezione bottlings from 2022 include Castello di Gabbiano’s Vigneto Cerbaiola, sourced from a single parcel in San Donato in Poggio, and Pomona’s Vigna del Termine.

The latter will eventually bear the UGA of Vagliagli – one of three additional subzones permitted from 2027.

Don't forget the 2022s

Not to be outdone by the 2022s, the late-release 2021s offer as much pleasure as cellaring potential.

Among my personal highlights, Castagnoli’s transportive Salita and Nardi’s effusive Vigna del Pino both wave the flag for the Castellina UGA.

Built for the long term, Castello di Monsanto’s celebrated Vigna Poggio from San Donato in Poggio is outstanding. Likewise, Panzano-based Le Cinciole comes out with its best ever vintage of Aluigi.

Finally, after years in the making, Querciabella has released three new Gran Selezione representing Greve, Radda and – another UGA-in-waiting – Lamole.

‘This was Sebastiano’s dream,’ says long-time winemaker Manfred Ing. However, Sebastiano Cossia Castiglioni ceded ownership of the winery to his sister Mita Castiglioni and her son Andrea before seeing the project reach fruition.

The wines are a stunning testament to his legacy, with the Radda bottling getting my top vote.

Ultimately, no single subzone triumphs above the others. Instead, the exciting and diverse wines emanating from across the region serve to reinforce the UGA project, cementing the ongoing commitment of Chianti Classico's top estates to the Gran Selezione category.

Read the rest of Michaela's Chianti Classico analysis:

Michaela's top Gran Selezione released this year

Gran Selezione: Best of the rest

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Old-school or contemporary? Chianti Classico’s wineries argue that 2024 is both.

‘They recall the Chianti Classicos produced in vintages of yesteryear,’ says Monteraponi’s Alessandra Deiana, who describes them as elegant, fine boned and lively.

At the same time, wineries are hopeful that these chillable, chuggable reds will appeal to today’s tastes. ‘It’s what wine drinkers are looking for now’, asserts Paolo Paffi at Casa Emma.

What is the 2024 style?

Stylistically, the 2024 Chianti Classico annatas are slender and frisky, with modest alcohols typically hovering between 12-13%.

Quality, however, is mixed. Those that shone are vivacious, agile and refreshing, exhibiting lovely perfumes and extraordinary lightness with satisfying flavour.

Some are less charming, even a bit angular, while the weakest examples reveal lean and diluted wines with green, unripe tannins.

Embodying the beauty of 2024, Badia a Coltibuono is my top annata. Other highlights include Monteraponi, Jurij Fiore & Figlia’s unoaked Sonocosì, and Principe Corsini’s Villa Le Corti for value.

Viticcio spent less time in wood to allow for an earlier release and is all the better for it. Both San Giusto a Rentennano and Poggerino show a bit more density and structure relative to their counterparts without forsaking the identity of the vintage.

While the annata category is often a treasure trove of wines that overdeliver, this is less prevalent in 2024. Even so, most sit comfortably and modishly within their station.

I am less inclined to put away a few bottles ‘for science’ as I often do; instead, it is a vintage for immediate and uninhibited drinking.

For those – like me – who love lithe sprightly reds, the vintage’s successes are worth buying. Who knows when a profile like 2024 will come around again?

Clinging on to organics

Chianti Classico 2024: Vintage in depth

The 2024 vintage of Chianti Classico is certainly unlike any other in the last decade. A wet spring, followed by the dry and progressively hot summer somewhat resembled 2023.

September and October, however, were marked by cool temperatures and unremitting rain, the likes of which growers had not seen in years.

‘That extended ripening cycle gave us lower alcohol, brighter acidity, and a freshness and luminosity in the wines that I find genuinely exciting,’ raves Roberto Stucchi at Badia a Coltibuono.

While many echo his enthusiasm, others are less convinced. Matteo Buccerelli at Antico Podere Casanova decided against bottling a Chianti Classico altogether, claiming that the wine is ‘too thin’.

By all accounts, the growing season was gruelling. The wet spring brought high disease pressure, and after devastating losses to peronospora (downy mildew) in 2023, agronomist teams were extra vigilant about staying on top of spraying.

The vines rebounded from the low yields of 2023 with a bumper crop. The Chianti Classico consorzio reports a total production of 305,000 hectolitres in 2024, which is 50% more than 2023, and the highest since 2019.

At San Giusto a Rentennano, Luca Martini di Cigala says that green harvesting was ‘fundamental’ to achieving full ripeness.

He dropped 25-30% of bunches between July and August, and another 10-12% at the beginning of September. ‘Too often, grape thinning is done too late or not at all,’ he emphasises.

The heavy loads were exacerbated by the rain in September, which plumped up berries and slowed ripening, particularly in areas with less sun exposure. The once common practice of deleafing became vital again.

According to several growers, achieving phenolic ripeness was a challenge, especially in vineyards where the summer heat had blocked photosynthesis. However, waiting for ripeness increased the risk of rot.

The long and onerous harvest lasted well into October and required multiple passages in between downpours.

Thin, delicate skins demanded gentle vinifications. Winemakers cited everything from less pumping over, avoiding punching down and shorter macerations.

The latter was also due to logistics, as there were just so many grapes to vinify – estates scrambled to get their hands on more vats to deal with the surfeit.

‘2024 was undoubtedly difficult to manage, and costlier compared to other years,’ says Angela Fronti at Istine. ‘Nevertheless, it was highly rewarding in the end.’

Read the rest of Michaela's Chianti Classico analysis:

Late release – A look at the 2023s

Michaela's pick of Chianti Classico 2024 (& late releases)

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I was chatting to a winemaker recently over dinner, and I confided in him an insecurity of mine.

I explained that while I didn’t normally find it difficult to describe the style of any given Rhône vintage, I found it peculiarly challenging to succinctly summarise that of 2022.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I feel the same way.’ It helped put my mind at rest. But I’m still determined to get to grips with this slippery customer.

In any given year, wines tend to perform rather like flocks of birds or shoals of fish: there might be smaller sub-groups or individual outliers, but the majority move in the same direction to create a general vintage style.

The 2022, however, is unusually chaotic.

The season

Lewis Bungener of Clos de Caveau says ‘2022 was a very particular vintage – one that initially caused real concern.’

Between 15 October 2021 and 1 September 2022, just 300mm of rain fell in the southern Rhône, compared to an average of 600mm.

Combined with the intense heat (it was the hottest May on record) many vines simply shut down and stopped growing in order to conserve water.

‘The rain that eventually came in late summer changed everything,’ says Bungener.

‘The effect was extraordinary: what had threatened to become heavy wines with dry, harsh tannins found an incredible balance, gaining freshness and definition. That said, producers who misjudged maturity timings did still suffer.’

Cécile Dusserre of Domaine de Montvac agrees, saying: ‘We had two nights of rain on 7 and 8 September, and we finished harvesting on 14 September.’

Rain at harvest can cause grapes to rot, but conditions had been so hot and dry, the water was welcome.

‘It allowed for a more relaxed juice and lowered the concentration of the berries,’ says Dusserre.

Though controlled irrigation is permitted in Vacqueyras, it was gratifying to see that some of the best wines this year were produced by estates that don’t water their vines, such as Domaine de Montvac, Domaine Montirius and Domaine la Monardière.

It proves that even in very dry years, Vacqueyras can still produce excellent wines, which bodes well for an uncertain future.

The tasting

These extreme conditions created a series of obstacles and pitfalls that vignerons were forced to navigate. Not everyone succeeded.

The year started with a huge abundance of grapes. Those who failed to drop fruit often struggled to eventually ripen all their berries, ending up with green, unripe flavours.

The lack of rain during the growing season produced very small berries, with little juice but thick skins. For some, excessive extraction led to tough tannins.

Intense heat can cause many problems, and some wines suffered from high alcohol – though not as many as I expected. Instances of low acidity or pruney fruit were thankfully rare.

And finally, some wines failed to make the grade simply due to excessive oak. Layering oak tannins on top of robust fruit tannins produced some inelegant, clunky wines.

But many producers managed to sidestep some or all these potential snares to create wines of balance and drinkability.

The verdict

Having had a few years in bottle to come together, many are now looking better than they did from barrel – both whites and reds.

I felt happy to recommend around half the wines I tasted, and they are featured below.

And many of those who did succeed really excelled.

As Bungener says: ‘The vintage across the region produced a mixed picture but for those who managed the conditions well, 2022 produced wines of real distinction: a rare combination of richness and fullness alongside finesse and freshness.’

This tasting helped me to understand this confounding year. The key is this: the best wines excel despite the vintage, not because of it.

The best Vacqueyras 2022 wines in bottle

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Readers should bear in mind that the 2023 growing season offered Napa producers the luxury of time: a long, relatively mild growing season with extended hang time for grapes and above-average yields – the kind of year that’s being widely described as ‘the vintage of a lifetime’.

And while official narratives can be rhapsodic, a more straightforward description might be that 2023 represents the ideal Napa Valley vintage: a year when the vines had everything they needed without the pressure of damaging heat or rain.

Many 2023s will end up among the era’s greats, but a small percentage of wines bear surprising lightness, likely a result of overcropping and extraction choices that over-taxed the tannins, leading to dilution.

I’ll add that there is also a compelling argument that the denser, more inherently concentrated 2021s may give the 2023s a run for their money, even if only long-term cellaring will settle the matter.

Rain at the right time

Nevertheless, the stage was set for an exceptional vintage, with winter rains helping ensure the vines were in a really good place to kick off the year, with good moisture in the soil.

More than 457mm of rain fell across Napa Valley between October and December of 2022 – double the typical amount.

Another 324mm fell in January, 121mm in February, followed by 249mm in March, just before bud break.

Temperatures from December 2022 through the end of March 2023 hovered between 10°C and 18°C in the daytime, dipping to 2°-7°C at night.

That coolness held consistent from spring through summer and into harvest. Daytime highs ranged from the low to mid-20s°C from June through October, with only one day over 38°C in early July.

Peak highs reached about 36°C just a few times between August and October. Most notably, September was unusually cool, with no days above 32°C, meaning growers had to be extra patient, hopeful for an Indian summer with no rain.

Thankfully, nothing beyond a centimetre or so of rain fell in October.

Canopy management

Rombauer Vineyards’ Richie Allen recalls a cold spring, with bud burst quite delayed, which put back flowering and pushed harvest out several weeks into late October and early November.

‘It never got quite warm, and we thought it was going to be another 2010 or 2011, with tons of rain and everything not getting ripe,’ he says.

Instead, Mother Nature was kind. Orin Swift’s Dave Phinney said 2023 reminds him of 1997 in Napa when there was ‘no weather pressure or rush to free up fermentation tanks’.

Nickel & Nickel winemaker Joe Harden says: ‘It was a dream for winemakers. If you managed your canopy, kept enough leaves to the end to maintain dappled sunlight, you got polished, silky tannins and supreme elegance, and it was incredibly welcome after the hot, challenging 2022 vintage.’

‘Abundant’ and ‘friendly’ are the two words that describe the 2023 vintage for Dominus Estate owner Christian Moueix.

‘If you have good growth, you let the ends of the vines grow to get out excess growth and arrive at a certain balance in terms of the size of the canopy,’ he says.

‘In every berry, you have all of the universe of the vintage, and you want each berry to get over the finish line.’

Too much of a good thing

For some, bigger canopies are welcome and easier to maintain. ‘I knew early on that there was a decent amount of fruit,’ recalls Arkenstone’s Sam Kaplan, ‘and I saw cooler days, so crop adjustment was the storyline of the season.’

Consulting winemaker Thomas Rivers Brown agrees that mitigating crop load was essential to success.

‘If there’s a downside to 2023, it was a big crop year, and if you had a site that couldn’t handle that size of crop, there would be dilution in the wines if you didn’t thin,’ he says.

‘Berries never shrivelled in 2023,’ meaning fruit concentration couldn’t come from selective raisining – it was all about reducing the number of bunches appropriately.

Indeed, during the four months I spent visiting producers and eventually tasting more than 600 wines, I found that just 10% of wines or so felt somewhat diluted, lacking the structured, ripe tannins I’d expected to find in abundance across all wines.

And while certainly pleasant, they lacked the integrity of the vintage and resulted in my lowest-scoring wines (having said that, low scores were very rare, likely because of the calibre of producers who presented wines).

Marcus Notaro of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars says that as late as September, there were ‘some lingering green berries through veraison, so you needed extra-long hang time’.

He adds: ‘For us, we had a nice combination of ripe grapes – not super-sugar-loaded grapes, because of the coolness, but the length of time let us get the tannins to a nice, ripe level.’

Jonathan's wines of the vintage

• Kinsman Eades Anjea, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Yountville) (100)
• Dalla Valle Vineyards, MDV Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley (100)
• O'Shaughnessy Estate Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Mt Veeder) (99)
• La Pelle Wines Reserve, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (100)
• Monsieur Etain (by Scarecrow) Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Rutherford) (98)
• Merryvale Profile Napa Valley (St Helena) (98)
• Robert Mondavi Winery 60th Anniversary Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (98)
• The Debate Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (100)
• Bryant Estate Bryant Family Vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (99)
• Freemark Abbey Sycamore Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Rutherford) (98)
• Cathiard Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (100)
• Facets Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (95)
• JCB Surrealist Napa Valley (97)
• Larkmead Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Calistoga) (96)
• Nickel & Nickel Winery, Element 28, Napa Valley, Cabernet Sauvignon (99)

Back to the old ways

Over and over, during the many weeks I spent tasting at wineries, winemakers across the valley commented on the psychological shift required after 2022.

‘We felt deeply scarred by the 2022 vintage,’ said Brown. ‘We had a really wet winter, so there was plenty of groundwater, and we had a pretty big fruit set, and we just kept holding our breath for bad things to come, and they never came. You had to learn to be patient again. You had to pay attention to tannin maturity because if you harvested any grapes too early, you’d be harvesting unripe tannins.’

Jason Moulton, winemaker for Whitehall Lane, was reminded of 2016, when ‘the crop load was heavier, but you had perfect [flavour and tannin] extraction during fermentation, to the point that you’re not forcing a post-ferment protocol to extract more’.

Michael Scholz, vice president of winemaking and vineyards for St Supéry, noted that the moderate temperatures ‘allowed vines to keep working through the season without stopping for any heat spells’, thereby aiding both ‘flavour and phenolic development, giving us great flavours, ripe tannins that were not big and not so aggressive, and above all, vibrancy and freshness in the wines’.

‘We learned that tannins and colour are heat sensitive, and when we don’t have those issues, we have darker-coloured wines with beautifully fine-grained, resolved tannins,’ said Freemark Abbey winemaker Kristy Melton.

Cathiard Vineyard winemaker Justine Labbe echoed that sentiment, noting, ‘we had integrated tannins right after fermentation’, a structural factor that has clearly played out even with time in bottle.

For Sullivan Rutherford Estate winemaker Jeff Cole: ‘This vintage felt like the way Napa Valley operated years ago, when you weren’t thinking about picking Cabernet in September.’

Luc Morlet of Morlet Family Vineyards, was reminded of the excellent 2016s, which benefited from rains that finally ended the drought years of 2013-2015.

‘The wines have energy and freshness that will make them a true vanguard that we’ll be able to cellar for multiple decades.’

Cristaldi’s pick of the top 2023 Napa Cabernets to buy – and to keep

The wines below includes a representative selection scored between 93-100 points. For all of Jonathan Cristaldi's scores from the vintage, click here.

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For all of Jonathan Cristaldi's scores from the vintage, click here.

Napa Valley 2023 Cabernet Sauvignons: 100-points

Napa Valley 2023 Cabernet Sauvignons: 99-points

Napa Valley 2023 Cabernet Sauvignons: 98-points

Napa Valley 2023 Cabernet Sauvignons: 97-points

Napa Valley 2023 Cabernet Sauvignons: 96-points

Napa Valley 2023 Cabernet Sauvignons: 95-points

More from this report

Spend enough time outside the wine industry and a curious pattern emerges: almost no one thinks about buying wine to open decades from now.

Among the parents of my daughter’s friends and most people I meet outside professional wine circles, the idea rarely even comes up.

Wine is something to drink tonight, maybe this weekend, perhaps next year – but 20 or 30 years down the road? That seems almost unimaginable.

Part of the hesitation is practical. Many people assume that aging wine requires a wine cellar.

In reality, all it takes is a thoughtful purchase and a cool, dark place to store a bottle properly. If you want to make the effort truly worthwhile, look for wines in large formats – magnums, double magnums, or even larger.

These bottles age more gracefully because the ullage (volume of air to liquid) is so small, making oxidation even slower, while the flavors and textures evolve more slowly and beautifully over time.

Buy a bottle from the birth year of your grandchild, store it carefully, and hold onto it for two decades or more.

But don’t wait 20 years to tell the story. When your grandchild is eight or nine years old, show them the bottle and explain why you bought it.

Tell them about the people who grew the grapes and the place where the wine was made.

Explain that wine is simply fermented grape juice that – if all goes well – transforms with time into something extraordinary.

The joy of old bottles

One day, perhaps at a wedding, an anniversary, the purchase of a first home, or another milestone worth celebrating, that bottle will be opened.

The cork will ease out, the wine will swirl in the glass, and the aromas will rise: savory, expressive, captivating. The flavours will be layered and complex, the textures deep and hauntingly delicious.

That is the gift of aged wine—the taste of something remarkable shared at a moment that matters.

I would not have understood this myself had it not been for the family I married into.

My wife’s parents quietly held onto special bottles for decades, keeping them at proper cellar temperature until the right occasions arrived.

When we married, they brought some of those bottles out, and the experience added a certain magic to the evening.

I can still remember one in particular: a bottle of 1982 Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Carte Or Brut we enjoyed over dinner at Gary Danko in San Francisco in 2008 (a 26-year-old Champagne!).

The wine had turned a deep golden hue, the bubbles were fine and persistent, and the aromas exploded from the glass – toasted hazelnuts, truffle, and something wonderfully savoury and complex.

I remember the elegance of my soon-to-be bride, her joy and joie de vivre, and the pride her mother took in sharing a bottle she had patiently saved for years.

That is what a well-chosen bottle can do. It captures time, preserves a story, and waits quietly for a moment when life deserves to be celebrated.

I hope you consider creating that kind of memory for your children or grandchildren.

To help you get started, here are a few 2023 vintage wines worth buying – ideally in large format – and setting aside for the future.

18 Napa Valley 2023 Cabernets to cellar

1. Dalla Valle Vineyards, MDV Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley (100)
2. Harlan Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (100)
3. Lokoya Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Spring Mountain) (100)
4. The Debate Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (100)
5. Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (100)
6. Ad Vivum Sleeping Lady Vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Yountville) (99)
7. Bond Pluribus Red Wine Napa Valley (99)
8. Cliff Lede Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (99)
9. Colgin Cellars IX Estate Red Napa Valley (99)
10. Louis M. Martini Bruadair Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Mt Veeder) (99)
11. O'Shaughnessy Estate Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Mt Veeder) (99)
12. Annulus Cellars Vine Hill Ranch Vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (99)
13. Stony Hill Côte Rouge Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Spring Mountain) (99)
14. Spottswoode Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (St Helena) (98)
15. Corison Winery Sunbasket Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (St Helena) (98)
16. William Selyem Beckstoffer Vineyard To Kalon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley
17. Mt. Brave Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Mt Veeder) (98)
18. Impensata Las Posadas Vineyard Proprietary Red Napa Valley (Howell Mountain) (97)

For all of Jonathan Cristaldi's scores from the vintage, click here.

More from this report

In past vintage reports, we have published separate features highlighting select Napa Valley sub-appellations – often eight or so of the valley’s 17 nested AVAs – typically focusing on those regions that submitted enough wines to warrant deeper exploration.

This year, with the 2023s, we are taking a slightly different approach, highlighting the 'Stars of the AVAs' in a single list, again guided by the regions with the strongest representation in submissions.

These are wines worth seeking out because they capture, in crisp detail, the defining characteristics of their respective appellations.

Top Coombsville 2023 Cabernets

Coombsville is situated at the southern end of Napa Valley, and among the coolest of the sub-AVAs, strongly influenced by marine air and fog drifting in from San Pablo Bay.

The best Cabernet examples tend to be dark-fruited yet bright and energetic, with lifted aromatics, ultra-fine tannins, and a sense of tension and length that distinguishes the wines of this windswept corner of the valley.

• Favia Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• La Pelle Wines Ceniza Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• Paul Hobbs Nathan Coombs Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• Rewa Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• AXR Bennett Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (97)

Top Stags Leap District 2023 Cabernets

Vines in the Stags Leap District AVA are planted from near valley floor elevations up to about 123 metres, with the craggy, exposed palisades of Stags Leap rising dramatically above the region.

The wines are often defined by finely sculpted tannins with a polished, fine-grained texture, supported by a typically volcanic mineral edge alongside red-fruit notes and warm spice nuances.

• Cliff Lede Poetry Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• Stag's Leap Wine Cellars SLV Vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• Robert Mondavi Winery WH Vineyard, The Estates Cabernet Sauvignon (96)
• Chimney Rock Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (94)
• Lithology Steltzner Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (96)

Top Oakville 2023 Cabernets

Cabernet Sauvignons from Oakville characteristically deliver concentration and depth, layered with complex aromas, flavours, and textures.

The best examples combine muscular structure with a sense of poise and refinement, achieving a balance between power and perfumed elegance that has made the AVA synonymous with some of Napa Valley’s most celebrated wines.

• Amici Cellars Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (100)
• Harbison Estate Horseshoe Cabernet Sauvignon (100)
• Harlan Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (100)
• Dalla Valle Vineyards Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (99)
• TOR Wines Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (99)

Top Rutherford 2023 Cabernets

Cabernet Sauvignon grown on the benchlands and ancient riverbeds of Rutherford often expresses the hallmark 'Rutherford dust', a quality evident both aromatically and on the palate.

This signature character can appear as dusty earth, dried rose petal, or unsweetened cocoa powder, lending savoury nuance to wines that typically show generous fruit and structured tannins.

• Scarecrow Cabernet Sauvignon (99)
• Dana Estates Helms Vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon (99)
• J.H. Wheeler Beckstoffer Georges III Vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon (97)
• St. Supéry Estate Vineyards & Winery Rutheford Estate Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (96)
• Whitehall Lane Winery Millennium MM Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (96)

Top Mount Veeder 2023 Cabernets

High on the western Mayacamas range, Mount Veeder’s steep slopes and rugged terrain produce some of Napa Valley’s most structured mountain Cabernets.

The wines typically display powerful, muscular tannins and a deep forest-berry profile, underscored by earthy woodland notes and a spectrum of blue- to black-fruited intensity.

A distinctive graphite-like minerality often runs through the best examples, giving the wines both gravity and lift.

• Pott Wine Incubo Cabernet Sauvignon (99)
• Lokoya Mount Veeder Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• Mt. Brave Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• Pilcrow Archer & Byrd Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• Hess Collection 'The Lion' Cabernet Sauvignon (97)

Top St. Helena 2023 Cabernets

Situated near the narrow 'hourglass' point of Napa Valley, the St. Helena AVA tends to experience warmer daytime temperatures and relatively limited wind flow.

The resulting wines often show a ripe, dense fruit profile with generous texture, yet without angular tannins, offering a plush, approachable expression of Cabernet Sauvignon.

• B Cellars Beckstoffer Las Piedras Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (100)
• Stewart Cellars NOMAD Beckstoffer Georges III Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (97)
• Rombauer Stice Lane Cabernet Sauvignon (96)
• Patria A. Price Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (96)
• Whitehall Lane Winery Leonardini Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (95)

Top Howell Mountain 2023 Cabernets

Perched above the fog line, Howell Mountain encompasses an array of slopes, rolling hills, and diverse microclimates.

Its well-draining, rocky soils encourage small berries and concentrated fruit.

The wines are known for their formidable tannic structure, often presenting a broad, textured mid-palate supported by excellent fruit concentration and a distinctive mineral elegance.

• Arkenstone Estate Red (100)
• Salty Goats Wine Co. Cabernet Sauvignon (99)
• La Jota Vineyard Co Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• Sylvan Lake Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• Moone Tsai Wines Hillside Blend Red Wine (97)

Top Calistoga 2023 Cabernets

At the northernmost end of Napa Valley, Calistoga sits at the foot of Mount St. Helena, nestled between the Mayacamas and Vaca mountain ranges.

The AVA is typically warmer during the summer months than most other parts of the valley, allowing tannins to ripen fully.

The best wines offer ample mouthfeel and complexity while maintaining balance, delivering richness without excessive heaviness or over-concentration.

• Hourglass Bluelne Estate Cabernet Sauvignon (97)
• Donelan Cabernet Sauvignon (97)
• Venge Vineyards Igneous Cabernet Sauvignon (96)
• Baldacci Family Vineyards Stella Knight Vineyard (94)
• Davies Vineyards Oliven Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (94)

For all of Jonathan Cristaldi's scores from the vintage, click here.

More from this report

The wines for short-term pleasure

For the most part, the 2023 Cabernets are built for a long life.

However, they are also immensely joyful, easy to drink, and expressive in their youth, thanks to the long growing season, which produced refined tannins that are already well integrated at this early stage.

I combed through my notes to find those wines that speak most clearly of pure deliciousness—the kind that are very hard to put down.

This short list highlights some of my easy-drinking, enjoy-now favourites, though they should drink beautifully over the next three to seven years.

• Schrader Cellars Old Sparky To Kalon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (100)
• Argot Sage Ridge Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (97)
• To Kalon Vineyard Company HWC Napa Valley (Oakville) (98)
• Tres Perlas Barber Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (98)
• Fait-Main Wines Beckstoffer Missouri Hopper Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (97)
• Castello di Amorosa Manley Lane Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Rutherford) (93)
• B Cellars Star Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Rutherford)
• Clos du Val Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Stags Leap District) (94)
• Desiree Wine Company Out of Sight Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (St Helena) (93)
• Coronet Wines Lady Liberty Vineyard, Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (95)

The wines with mid-term appeal

We’re moving into wines you may be tempted to drink right away, but which will benefit from additional time in bottle.

So when that shipment arrives, do your best to hold off – or buy enough that you can pop a cork now and hold the rest for a few more years before diving in.

These wines possess immensely powerful, chewy tannins, and while they soften with a solid four to six hours of decanting, you really owe it to yourself to tuck them away until the tannins integrate further and the drinking experience becomes pure enjoyment.

• Morlet Family Vineyards Cœur de Vallée Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (100)
• Nickel & Nickel Winery Element 28, Napa Valley, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (99)
• Paul Hobbs Beckstoffer Las Piedras Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (St Helena) (99)
• Pott Wine Incubo Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Mt Veeder) (99)
• Rudd Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (99)
• Venge Vineyards DLCV Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (99)
• Bure Family Wines Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (St Helena) (98)
• Burgess Quartz Creek Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (98)
• Dominus Napa Valley (98)
• Vine Hill Ranch VHR, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (98)

The wines for long-term reward

And now we arrive at the pièce de résistance – the moment de vérité. The wines that follow are the true heavyweights of the vintage: deep, structured, and destined for long lives in the cellar.

Even where there is surprising early charm, these wines possess the structural hallmarks of longevity: a firm tannic backbone, a vibrant spine of acidity, judicious use of oak, and layers of flavours and spice that unfold with complexity and precision.

Not all the usual Napa icons appear here, either—several newcomers have earned their place, signalling brands to watch and collect over the coming years.

And because the 2023 vintage produced such a wealth of cellar-worthy Cabernets, be sure to see the section on wines to buy for your grandchildren for additional long-haul candidates.

• Pahlmeyer Pièce de Résistance Napa Valley (100)
• AXR AxR1 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (100)
• Harbison Estate Horseshoe Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (100)
• Keplinger Wines Vine Hill Ranch Vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (100)
• CADE Winery Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Howell Mountain) (99)
• Cardinale Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (99)
• Pilcrow Granite Lake Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Howell Mountain) (99)
• Estate 8 Iconic AVA Mt Veeder, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Mt Veeder) (99)
• Favia Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (99)
• Simon Family Estate Reserve, Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (100)
• Beaulieu Vineyard Georges de Latour Private Reserve, Cabernet Sauvignon (98)
• Freemark Abbey Sycamore Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Rutherford) (98)
• Julien Fayard Wines Sleeping Lady Vineyard, Cabernet Sauvignon (Yountville) (97)
• Spottswoode Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (St Helena) (98)
• Gamble Estates Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (Oakville) (99)

For all of Jonathan Cristaldi's scores from the vintage, click here.

More from this report

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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The buzz for Napa Valley’s 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon wines began circulating during the 2025 Premiere Napa Valley Barrel Auction.

I recall several producers belting the phrase ‘over the moon ecstatic,’ and gushing over the ‘plentiful tannins’ and ‘bright, grippy acidity’ that seemed to mark the wines in their early maturing phase.

Hardly anyone I spoke to had harvested Cabernet grapes in September—certainly unusual if we look back over historical picking dates from the last decade.

In 2023, most began harvesting in October and continued well into November.

Early on, the Napa Valley Vintners promoted 2023 as ‘the Vintage of a Lifetime.’

My own verdict, after tasting more than 600 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons from the year, is that the phrase, while catchy, may not quite capture the deeper truth of the season.

A more accurate description might be that 2023 represents the ideal Napa Valley vintage: a year when the vines had everything they needed – including time itself, without the pressure of damaging heat or rain.

Heavy winter rains replenished soils depleted by several drought years, placing vines in a strong physiological position as the growing season began.

Soils rich in moisture and microbial life provided vines with the resources to produce healthy canopies and excellent fruit set.

Once the season began, Napa Valley experienced something increasingly rare – stability in the weather, with moderate temperatures throughout spring and summer, and well into harvest time.

As Michael Scholz, Vice President of Winemaking and Vineyards of St. Supéry, observed, these moderate conditions allowed flavour and phenolic development to progress together, yielding wines with, ‘great flavours, ripe tannins, and above all vibrancy and freshness'.

The finished wines possess deep crimson colours, yet striking luminosity, layered fruit purity, and silky, finely structured tannins supported by vibrant acids and graphite-tinged minerality.

Managing yields

If there is any criticism of Mother Nature in 2023, it is that September might have benefited from a handful of warmer days.

A brief stretch of additional heat could have accelerated ripening by roughly a week or ten days and pushed the vintage into truly historic territory.

Even so, growers across the valley widely described the year as a dream scenario.

Nickel & Nickel winemaker Joe Harden called it ‘a dream for winemakers,’ noting that careful canopy management yielded polished, silky tannins and remarkable elegance in the finished wines.

Of course, a great growing season does not guarantee great wine. What winemakers do with the fruit ultimately determines whether a vintage lives up to its potential.

In 2023, vineyard management was critical. The abundant water and healthy canopies led to generous yields, meaning producers who failed to thin crops risked dilution in the finished wines.

As I tasted through hundreds of wines, only a small percentage showed signs of that kind of lightness.

The overwhelming majority displayed the structure, freshness, and depth expected of a great Napa year.

What is perhaps most exciting is how 2023 will sit alongside the extraordinary 2021 vintage.

A compelling duo

The wines of 2021 are dense, inky, and powerfully structured – born of a shorter growing season with reduced yields and vines combating hydric stress.

By contrast, the 2023s lean towards a brighter, fresher profile, are almost relaxed, yet framed by equally powerful tannins that are so extremely fine-grained they are already seamlessly integrated, making for incredibly easy enjoyment.

For collectors and traders of high-end Napa Cabernet, that pairing is particularly intriguing.

The muscular grandeur of 2021 and the poised elegance of 2023 will likely age on parallel trajectories for decades.

If the wines evolve as expected, the coming years may see these two vintages spoken of together as defining benchmarks of the modern Napa Valley era.

Together, they may form one of Napa Valley’s most compelling back-to-back collector vintages.

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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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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

Related articles

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

Related articles

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

Related articles

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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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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If 2022 was a paradox, Barbaresco’s 2023 vintage was a rollercoaster. The unexpected twists and switches left winegrowers as exhausted as perplexed. ‘Every month brought a different challenge’, recalls Roberta Ceretto.

The drought of 2022 carried over into 2023, and by March, the Tanaro River had almost dried out (see lead image). When the rain finally returned at the end of April, it didn’t let up until mid-June.

In another hairpin turn, summer arrived suddenly with soaring temperatures and barely another drop of rain until the end of August. And rather than droplets, the intense water bomb didn’t let up for two days. Temperatures somewhat abated afterward but remained above average throughout September.

While the wet spring meant peronospora (downy mildew) was a constant threat, wineries were quite happy to see water reserves replenished.

‘All the nutrition in the soil that the plant couldn't absorb in 2022 and 2021, it sucked up with the rain in 2023,’ explains Gaia Gaja.

Much more worrisome was the heatwave, bringing unprecedented temperature spikes in the second half of August. ‘It reached 42℃,” asserts Pierguido Busso, who noted issues not just with dehydration but also sunburn.

At Gaja, girapoggio – or horizontally planted rows – suffered the most damage. ‘Bunches on the west side had to be dropped,’ Gaia states. She admits that she didn’t like the wines immediately after fermentation. ‘I was concerned about unripe, green notes but they improved in the barrel’.

Besides using protective measures such as kaolin on the bunches and hail nets for shade, the estate recently started planting native trees in key vineyards like Sorì San Lorenzo. ‘Maybe in 10 years they will provide enough shade and we won’t need nets’, Gaia posits.

Unsurprisingly, the vines shut down in the summer of 2023, and unlike 2022, harvest ended up being quite late.

Deciding when to pick proved difficult. ‘The grapes went from green to overripe quickly’, says David Fletcher, adding that southern exposures struggled the most. At Poderi Colla, Federica Colla describes the difficult harvest: ‘We had to make three passages in the same vineyard as bunches ripened at different times’.

End of an era

Choosing a favourite at Produttori del Barbaresco is like splitting hairs. All nine bottlings are cellarworthy, with clearly defined personalities.

Perhaps the most surprising this year was the Montefico, which showed more vigour than usual without sacrificing its signature mineral nuance.

My tasting at this historic cooperative was bittersweet, as it was the last with Aldo Vacca: after more than 30 years as managing director, he is retiring.

Besides being a steadfast leader at the winery, he was a tireless ambassador for Barbaresco, and I am personally indebted to him for much of what I have learned about the region.

Vacca leaves big shoes to fill, but his long-time right-hand, Luca Cravanzola has stepped confidently into the position – yet another changing of the guard that is shaping Barbaresco’s bright future.

The vintage comparison

After skipping 2022 altogether, Sottimano returns with a complete lineup of single-MGA bottlings. ‘2023 is 10 steps beyond 2022,’ declares Andrea Sottimano.

Conversely, Lena Oddero at Luigi Oddero favours 2022, referring to the 2023 Barbaresco as ‘Nebbiolino’ – little Nebbiolo.

‘The wines are ripe but not structured’, adds the estate’s winemaker, Francesco Versio. He describes 2023 as fresher and more vertical than 2022, because lower potassium levels resulted in more stable acidities.

Indeed, the 2023s tend to be markedly pale in colour, midweight and delicate in structure. Yet they are charming and balanced in their proportions, with ripe but not rich or confected flavours.

Some veer towards Langhe Nebbiolo in style, but with a bit more heft. My preference is for those wines not weighed down by overt wood, and I am pleased to see fewer faulty wines than in 2022.

Barbaresco: Top value picks

Bosio, Boschi dei Signori, Barbaresco 2023

When you have a midweek craving for Barbaresco, Boschi dei Signori offers an accessibly priced example.

Cà del Baio, Barbaresco Asili 2023

From one of Barbaresco’s most prestigious MGAs, Cà del Baio’s represents an excellent price-quality rapport.

Marchesi di Barolo, Barbaresco Serragrilli 2023

This pulls off both ripeness and restraint in one elegant, ready to drink package.

Produttori del Barbaresco, Barbaresco 2022

One of the best deals in Barbaresco year after year, with the 2022 no exception.

Massimo Rivetti, Barbaresco 2022

Not just well priced, this Barbaresco is packed with flavour – and certified organic to boot.

Barbaresco 2023: A commune by commune analysis

My wine of the vintage

Which Barbaresco to drink when?

Barbaresco releases: Tasted & rated

92 points and under