Bordeaux 2025: The vintage verdict plus top-scoring wines

‘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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