Bordeaux 2025: Digging deep to find the vintage's best Crus Bourgeois
Subjected to the worst of the 2025 vintage's extremes, quality among Bordeaux's Crus Bourgeois is very uneven. Valeria Tenison unearths those that are worth buying.
At a glance: Crus Bourgeois
The 2025 Cru Bourgeois classification includes 170 châteaux in Médoc, among them 14 Exceptionnel and 36 Supérieur, with a total vineyard area of 3,400 hectares, 21% of the total Médoc vineyard surface.
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.
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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
Bordeaux 2025: Top wines from the Crus Bourgeois
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Relatively pale ruby colour, but shiny and bright. Red fruits and blue flowers on the nose, already very appealing. Juicy on the palate, with pleasant...
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Attractive nose, with cassis, cinnamon, and a light minty touch. Powerful on the palate, high extraction and bold tannins. Good fruit sweetness, complemented by coffee...
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Floral nose, very perfumed, full of violets and dark berries. What a substance! Beautiful fruit - ripe but elegant. Blackberries and blue plums. Smooth and...
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Appealing nose of crunchy blueberries and black cherries backed by the spices and herbs. Creamy palate, vanilla from oak on a background of ripe black...
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Slightly reductive on the nose. Good structure, beautiful, crunchy fruit, and very polished tannins. Black and red cherries, blueberries, combined with savoury notes of nettle...
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Widely experienced as a manager of and sommelier in hotels and restaurants from Russia to the Maldives, Valeria is now based in a village near St-Emilion. She writes for publications including VertdeVin in Bordeaux, and runs her own boutique export company, A la Volée Int
