Bordeaux 2024 wine styles

The 2024 vintage presents a complex and uneven picture, shaped by a challenging growing season which pushed producers to their limits – both physically, mentally and financially.

You can read our Bordeaux 2024 weather article here.

Unlike the hedonistic, plush and concentrated 2022s or the precise, terroir-driven 2023s the 2024s lean towards a lighter, more fragrant style with moderate alcohol levels and vibrant acidities.

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Some put the vintage among those of the 1990s while others drew comparisons to 2001.

The nearest recent similar vintage however is 2021, which was also shaped by a cool, wet growing season that saw widespread mildew, delayed flowering and véraison, and difficult picking conditions resulting in wines with moderate alcohols and fresh acidities.

However, 2024 had a slightly drier and warmer summer which accelerated ripening, preserving fruit aromatics and giving slightly more concentration and depth.

Some 2024s are better than their 2021 counterparts and others were definitely not, although I have to say the samples were incredibly fragile this year and I found them highly variable from one tasting to another.

Several wines I tasted more than once including some I also tasted blind.

Key issues stylistically:

• Ripeness – a clear divide between those who achieved it and those who didn’t. Later harvests ensured better maturity but posed heavy botrytis risk as well as dilution. There are technical adjustments that can be made in the winery to increase alcohol and therefore body slightly but you can’t mask green, unripe fruit.
• Mouthfeel – a defining feature of 2024 is the texture of the wines – chalky, sometimes gravelly in mouthfeel, with a taut, mineral freshness shaping the wines rather than fruit depth or opulence. There are exceptions of course with fleshy, chewy wines that have a soft sweetness. Again, that depended on ripeness.
• Tannin quality – tannins ranged from beautifully powdery or seamlessly integrated to coarse and over-extracted. Success largely depended on gentle extraction and ripe picking, and/or heavy sorting
• Press wine management – as always estates have their preferred way of managing press wine but it seems to play a bigger role than usual this year. Some used more to add weight, others cut back to preserve finesse. The result is a spectrum of styles from crisp and delicate to more muscular.
• Notable performers / surprise estates – yes it’s an uneven vintage but that doesn’t mean only the most renowned estates did well. Pockets of limestone, winemakers with nerves of steel and estates who could afford to sacrifice some quantity achieved lovely surprises this year.

Best attributes

Though not a contender for the greats, the best wines offer flashes of aromatic precision, elegance and refreshing clarity with structure and length, standing apart in a vintage where inconsistency was the norm.

They are generally focused on crisp red berry fruit – or cool blueberry fruit – with high, sometimes electric acidity.

Tannins are typically less firm and compact than in previous years with a sense of softness and calm in the nicer examples.

Those who achieved maturity, and harvested ripe grapes, present wines with a hint of sweet, fleshiness which lends a joyful or happy aspect to the expressions.

At this stage some were already showing approachability and it’s likely many will be perfect candidates to drink young.

This may not be a vintage to cellar for decades despite the acidities.

Positives and negatives

On the whole, many 2024s have light bodies – they can be described both good and bad as; ‘delicate’ or ‘lean’, ‘graceful’ or ‘straight’ and ‘charming’ or ‘serious’ with fine tannins and less density than in other years.

However, the successes are those that achieve balance between fruit, acidity and tannins and which lean into the vintage, presenting more of an ‘honest’ representation of the conditions – be that as it may – rather than searching for something that wasn’t there.

That said, there are many wines that were overly weak or thin, lacking concentration as well as fruit with under ripe flavours, coarse tannins and dryness.

In some there was clear dilution with watery midpalates and others having bitter acidity that tastes almost citric in profile.

This is only my fourth en primeur vintage tasting as thoroughly as I do but some were the worst samples I have encountered at this stage.

General positives

• Low alcohols rarely exceeding 13.5%
• High, fresh acidities
• Leaner, more straight and well-defined profiles in general
• Where ripe, bright and juicy fruit giving a lively, fun quality
• Cool flavours rather than sunny or jammy
• Expressive aromatics – lots of florality
• Noticeable terroir nuances

General negatives

• Dilution / a sense of wateriness
• Green unripe aromatics
• Hollow mid palates
• Tart or sour acidity
• Dry, harsh overly filling or grippy tannins where there was too much extraction or too much unbalanced acidity
• Short finishes

Case by case basis

It’s not a simple picture however and for a region as big and varied as Bordeaux there can be no generalisations in 2024.

Shaped by a historically wet winter then a soggy spring with unrelenting mildew pressure and late-season rains, this is not a vintage of uniformity but one where careful vineyard management and winemaking aptitude prevailed.

It’s a case-by-case situation where the wines are the sum of all the parts and as such dialling into the detail at each estate was key.

I also think ageing or élevage will be critical this vintage. With already delicate frames, oxygen exchange as well as oak regimes will need to be carefully carried out.

I expect some wines to show better in bottle if handled correctly.

Dry and sweet wines

The whites and sweets offer mixed results in terms of style and quality with some exceptional bottles and some terrible ones.

It’s often the case that a Bordeaux vintage favours one colour over another but I don’t think that’s true of 2024.

Yes, the successful dry whites have excellent raciness, they’re fresh and crisp with lovely aromatic intensity and great drinkability.

Flavours are more stone and citrus fruit based than tropical with floral notes and plenty of minerality and salinity on offer from limestone terroirs.

Sémillon in particular shone with its tendency to be waxy and oily in hot vintages replaced by a sense of energy and crystalline purity.

Sweet wines, benefiting from botrytis in perfect conditions, show promise with an easy drinkability to them, but some lack the density and consistency of stronger vintages.

Don’t count it out

Bordeaux 2024 is not a uniform vintage, but neither is it a write-off.

In a year where nature threw many curveballs, producers with attentive vineyard work and restrained winemaking emerged with graceful wines that reflect a vintage of quiet confidence and honest character.

Coming soon: Our full report on Bordeaux 2024, to be published exclusively for Decanter Premium subscribers

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