Bordeaux 2019 wines: Our en primeur verdict

Overall red wine rating: 4.5/5

What a year, frankly.

I have never tasted more En Primeur samples, in a more unusual way. The final count is somewhere close to 1,000 wines where in a typical year I will taste around 600 to 700.

The vast majority at my house, perhaps 20 individual châteaux visits, and even one in a local (empty but for us) café.

The timing of the tastings was more spread out than usual obviously, starting from a few weeks into lockdown through to early June, and I re-tasted a far higher number than usual, as samples arrived through different consultants, groups or direct from the estates.

All of which means I can unhesitatingly say that 2019 is a successful vintage in Bordeaux.

Quick links

Bordeaux 2019 vintage: Clues on what to expect – weather, yields, Left Bank wines, Right Bank wines, whites and sweets, the market

Top scoring Bordeaux 2019 wines (coming soon)

Appellation overviews (coming soon)

Pauillac 2019 | St-Julien 2019 | Margaux 2019 | St-Estèphe 2019 | Pessac-Léognan & Graves 2019 | St-Emilion 2019 | Pomerol 2019 | Sauternes & Barsac 2019

Left Bank wine of the vintage: Château Latour | Right Bank wine of the vintage: L’Elgise Clinet

Full Verdict

I wrote my first overview of the vintage in mid-April, after tasting around 150 samples and speaking with various stakeholders from professors to winemakers, but 850 samples later my positive feelings about the potential of the year have only risen.

Search all Bordeaux 2019 En Primeur ratings published so far

This is good news, because there is plenty of wine out there. Production in 2019 was 486 million litres, close to 10-year average and just below 2018. Individual appellation yields are given below.

As usual, I don’t give perfect 100 scores to wines tasted En Primeur, but scores of either 98 or 99 (98-100) mean that they are at the absolutely top of the scale, and may be upgraded when re-tasted in 16 months’ time after bottling.

I also want to underline that the 90-94 points bracket means Highly Recommended, and that I try to leave the 95+ only to truly exceptional wines. This means that one clear suggestion is to look out for 94 point wines – for me a brilliant spot that indicates extremely high quality, and often you’ll find some of the best buys in the vintage at this level – I’m thinking of Batailley, Phélan Ségur, Pédésclaux, Gloria, Dame de Montrose and Saintayme, among many others.

Scores

Several in-barrel wines make the 98-100 (99) points bracket. All 98s could also see their scores raised when tasted in bottle.

The 98-100 are:

Château Latour

Château L’Evangile

Lafleur

Château L’Eglise Clinet

And the 98s, which could easily also head upwards:

Petrus

Château Mouton Rothschild

Château Lafite Rothschild

Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande

Château Ducru Beaucaillou

Château Léoville Las Cases

Château Margaux

Château Palmer

Château Montrose

Château Cos d’Estournel

Château Pavie Macquin

Château Beauséjour Duffau Lagarosse

If you pick one appellation: PomerolIf you pick one wine: L’Eglise Clinet

Ageing

Has the qualities to age because there are lots of tannins and colour compounds in this vintage (well managed by low temperature fermentations in the main), along with concentrated flavours and surprisingly good acidity levels considering the heat of the summer.

I am extremely confident that the best wines have decades ahead of them.

Issues

As has been the case for the past few years, a dry summer meant potential heat stress, particularly for young vines and sandy soils, and I did find prune and fig notes on occasion, so look out for this.

Age of vines make a difference to withstanding the heat of the summer – and classified estates tend to have older vines, partly because they do not machine harvest and so the vines get less of a battering. Often machine harvesting means that vines tend to need pulling up and replanting after 30 years or so – yet another way that the classified estates have an advantage over mere mortals, but in terms of what that means for us as buyers, there is less consistency away from the big names.

As an aside, I think we are going to have to get used to that. The idea of a globally successful vintage such as 2005 or 2010 becomes less realistic now that we are seeing summers with more and more extremes (whether rains or drought or heat), and it means that more and more we will see 5-star vintages only in certain areas where other parts of the region can only manage 3 or 4 stars.

It underlines the approach that the ISVV takes, where they don’t give vintages overall star ratings, but rather look at how individual areas reacted at specific moments in the year – from flowering to fruit set to colour change, final ripening and harvest. The understanding that things are more nuanced across Bordeaux according to soils and microclimates is likely to become even more important over the next decade, as is the realisation that cooler spots or areas with fresher soils will become increasingly prized.

Comparisons

You’re going to hear a lot of variation here – partly, I think, because châteaux owners have not been exchanging with each other as they usually would due to lock down.

At Vieux Château Certan I heard a 1988 comparison, while several on the Left Bank raised the potential of 2001.

Most however seem split evenly between 2009/2015 or 2010/2016. I would still put 2010 and 2016 as the best vintages of the past decade, but 2019 is not so far behind, in the best places.

Trends

The biggest news perhaps is that Château Palmer is slightly changing its selling strategy as of this year. Not going the full Latour, but releasing 50% En Primeur and 50% 10 years on (it turns out they have been holding back half of their production for the past decade, something that we have all suspected to be true with a number of châteaux). They are taking an extremely clear and simple approach – the En Primeur release in Spring, then a 10-year-old wine in September, released through the Place de Bordeaux. That means the 2010 vintage this September.

The rise of Malbec shows no signs of abating. This has been true for a number of years in the Cotes, but is now increasingly true in Lalande-de-Pomerol and Fronsac. Petit Verdot also continues to make more impact both on the Right as well as Left Bank, and I expect to see this trend continuing over the next few years – it’s a welcome one I believe, giving grip and counterpoint to the ripe fruits of hot summers.

Whites wines are getting more and more popular with the big names, and are clearly on trend. La Tour Carnet white is new this year, as is a dry white from Bastor Lamontagne in Sauternes and Château Doyac in Haut Médoc (called Pelican) and Paveil de Luze. Over in the Côtes, Ad Francos has a new dry white, as does Plaint-Point in Fronsac (most are bottled as AOC Bordeaux Blanc). There are also increasing numbers of (Vin de France) Chardonnays – Hubert de Boüard, Jean-Luc Thunevin’s Bad Boy.

The trend towards greener Bordeaux continues. As of 2019 vintage, 22% of the châteaux in the UGC are either certified organic or in conversion. This is positive to see, but these are the flagships of the region, and I would very much hope they can get this to more than 50% within a few years – or even better make environmental certification, whether HVE3 or equivalent, an essential part of membership, as St Emilion AOC has done for the 2021 vintage. Individually there are plenty of new organic certifications coming online – Château Croix de Labrie in its second year, Haut Bages Libéral has its Ecocert certification for the first time (although farmed organically since 2007), Pédesclaux is beginning its full conversion to organic farming.

Also increasingly important are wider green projects. La Fleur Cardinale has a tree-planting programme for every bottle sold. Cheval Blanc has just planted 850 fruit trees among the vines and has introduced a full farm of Brébis sheep and goats, pigs and chickens. A research programme funded by (among others out of Bordeaux) Claire and Gonzague Lurton is underway with La Belle Vigne led by expert Konrad Schreiber, looking at alternative ways to work vines from organic copper to planting of fruit trees.

Overall Margaux is becoming a leading appellation in the movement towards biodiversity, with over 80% of the vines in the appellation no longer using herbicides or insecticides, and 25 estates are engaged in more than 350 separate projects to instill greater balance, whether through ditches and hedgerows, wildlife sanctuaries or planting trees.

Consultant changes also continue. Newly-christened Cru Bourgeois Superieur Château Sérilhan in St Estèphe changed from Hubert de Boüard to Alain Raynaud. Axel Marchal continues to increase his reach at Croix de Gay in Pomerol, and Thomas Duclos also now at Giscours.

Prices

A quick note on prices because – unusually, but hey this is 2020 – the scores are coming out after the campaign has begun.

There have been some standout examples of wines coming out under the cheapest market price, which is what you should look for rather than specific percentage price drops.

The biggest buzz so far has got to have gone to Mouton Rothschild, closely followed by Haut-Brion, Palmer, Lafleur and Pontet-Canet.

For obvious reasons, those who have made a clear gesture to the market are being rewarded – and in my mind it is not just about the market this year, but about making a clear gesture to the Bordeaux wine lovers who are willing to buy the wines despite everything that is going on globally.

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