Best Pauillac 2024 wines tasted en primeur

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Pauillac 2024: The best wines transcended the difficulties of the vintage

Average yield: 29.5hl/ha

Variance from 2023: -45.9% (47.2hl/ha)

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the top wines from Pauillac 2024

Vintage overview

It was a tricky vintage overall for Pauillac producers with the lowest yield of all the main four Médoc appellations.

‘It was extremely difficult in the beginning of the growing season,’ said Lafite Rothschild’s technical director Éric Kholer who commented on the very wet and warm spring and high disease pressure.

‘2024 was the fifth vintage out of seven with a high pressure for mildew’ he said, although thanks to the team’s reactivity the estate lost between 10-15% of their eventual yield.

‘Summer was the best we could have hoped for’ he continued noting that they had only 15mm of rain between July and August.

The team picked under the rain at the end of September and because of the homogeneity of the grapes it was ‘more labour intensive to sort the berries’. Overall yields nevertheless were 32hl/ha.

Mouton equally picked during the rainy conditions with more than 400 harvesters on call.

‘We had to be present in the vineyard every day,’ said technical director Jean-Emmanual Danjoy. ‘If you could control mildew early you could relax until veraison. A few years ago we started spraying in mid May and in 2024 we started in the first week of April’.

He added that on 10 different occasions tractors needed to be dragged back out of the muddy soils. The team picked non-stop for two weeks and then used a densimetric bath for sorting for the first time at Mouton.

‘Some grapes were three weeks behind others and 10 days before the harvest the majority had a potential alcohol of 5.5%’, Danjoy continued.

Fighting spirit

Pontet Canet’s technical director Mathieu Bessonnet emphasised the ‘fighting spirit’ needed in 2024 and said it was ‘all about teamwork’. The estate sprayed 31 times and said they ‘almost didn’t lose any fruity because of mildew.

‘The key was to pick ripe. We could have picked earlier, but for what we want to do with only one wine, the only way is to take risks’.

They certainly paid off as Pontet is only of my favourite wines of the vintage with freshness, purity ripe tannins and a sense of completeness.

Latour was also excellent, and even more impressive, given their tiny 11hl/ha yields due to ‘missing some key spraying windows’.

Technical direct Helen Genin compares the wine to 2017 in aromatics and structure and said: ‘It will gain in plumpness and sweetness with the barrels adding additional muscle to the wine.’

Both Pichon Baron and Pichon Comtesse achieved 20hl/ha with the latter’s technical director Nicholas Glumineau said, ‘2024 was exhausting. There was a new decision to be made every day’.

He compared the vintage to 2008 – ‘straightforward Cabernets’ but also 2001 and 1998 ‘but the difference is the way we’ve treated the 2024s – less extraction, more gentle and precise maceration.’

The best Pauillac wines of 2024

There are certainly some great wines from Pauillac in 2024 but fewer exciting wines than in St-Estèphe or Margaux.

The wines are mostly straight and firm, with precision but also a sense of strictness, some with harsh tannins and a lack of fruit to balance the high acidities.

Highlights

• Château Mouton-Rothschild
• Château Pontet Canet
• Château Lafite Rothschild
• Château Latour

Standouts

• Château Pichon Baron
• Château Pichon Comtesse
• Château Lynch Bages
• Château Pedesclaux
• Château Grand Puy Ducasse
• Château Duhart Milon
• Château Haut Bages Libéreal

Value

• Château Fonbadet
• Château Pauillac

See the top-scoring Pauillac 2024 wines

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