Comparing the last five great Bordeaux vintages

With due apologies for my part in it, you are probably surrounded by an avalanche of notes for the recently bottled Bordeaux 2016 wines right now from merchants, journalists, bloggers and producers.

See tasting notes here:

Bordeaux 2016: How Right Bank wines taste now

Top Bordeaux 2016 wines: Full Médoc report

Perhaps you are wondering if it was wrong to miss out on buying the Bordeaux 2016 wines en primeur, or maybe you are suffering from buyer’s remorse and are interested in selling wines on.

With this in mind, I thought it might be useful to compare 2016 – in style but also in market enthusiasm – with the other top quality recent vintages that are competing for your attention and spend.

These other vintages are, I think we can agree, 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2015. So five years in total, out of 13 harvests, that all have some claim to be called great, and that all required consumers to pay out more money than they did in the ‘classic’ years in between.

For perspective, I looked at brokers’ data here in Bordeaux, plus reports from Decanter and the Bordeaux School of Oenology.

Liv-ex provided some brilliant data on wider trends and the performance in the secondary market of individual estates, albeit the data below only shows price trends in pound sterling currency.

Styles and Weather Conditions

It’s easy to see a natural pairing between 2009 and 2015, plus 2010 and 2016.

The first two are warmer years with richer fruits, and the second two are more architectural, with high acidity and serious tannic structure.

For me, 2005 remains the most balanced of the five, although it has the benefit of 13 years in the bottle so perhaps has an unfair advantage in this assessment.

Appellation Highlights

2005: A 5-star vintage on both Right and Left Bank and one with great consistency, with many wines beginning to drink well today.

Small berries, high concentration, great fruit quality and balance from nights that were relatively cool – a combination that always seems to bring out the best in Bordeaux. Highlights include Margaux and Pomerol. This was a year that reminded Christian Moueix of 1982. 

2009: A 5-star vintage on both banks, with a slight leaning to the Right. Some excellent St-Emilion wines, particularly where limestone could temper the exuberance. Bordeaux 2009 majors on fruit-filled pleasure but has some high-alcohols, up to 15.5% in some cases. Coupled with low acidity, this gives rise to a risk of brett in some instances. Still, lots of pleasurable drinking ahead from now and over the next few decades, even if it is unlikely to last as long as the 2010 and 2016 in many cases. 

2010: 5-star on both banks, with rich, high drama wines that are still extremely young. Lots of sunshine with cool nights ensured plenty of thick skins, intense concentrated flavours and big, bold tannins. A great year for Pauillac and St-Julien, in particular, but still a long way from being ready to drink and will need patience. 

2015: 5-star on the Right Bank, and 4.5-star on the Left Bank. There were particular highlights in St-Emilion, Pomerol, Margaux and Pessac-Léognan. Alcohols went as high as 15%abv for some wines, but fruit flavours are rich, juicy and appetising. 

2016: 5-star on the Left Bank, but 4.5-star on Right Bank. Tastings so far show particular highlights in Pauillac, St-Estèphe and St-Julien, with concentrated flavours and intense fruits. Will take their time to be ready to drink.

See more summaries on our Bordeaux vintage guide page

Perfect scores: 100 Point Wines

 Of wines from these five vintages that I have recently re-tasted in bottle, I gave 100 points to:

• Château Trotanoy 2016
• Léoville Las Cases 2016
• Lafite Rothschild 2016
• Lafleur 2015
• L’Eglise-Clinet 2015
• Margaux 2015
• Margaux 2005

I also gave Château Lafite Rothschild 2005 the full 100 point score in a separate tasting recently, while Decanter’s John Stimpfig gave Lafleur 2010 100 points.

I will be updating scores for 2009 in the next few months, as part of plans to re-assess the vintage nearly 10 years after harvest.

In the Glass

Average alcohol level can offer some indication of the kind of styles to expect, although it’s an extremely imprecise tool if taken on its own.

On this measure, 2005 wines rarely head above 13.5%abv, 2010 and 2016 have several wines that nudge 14%, whereas 2009 and 2015 regularly see wines at 14.5% and above.

Sugar levels per 100g are another way to judge this – with 2009 and 2015 being higher than the other three, and average acidity particularly low in 2009; remembering that Bordeaux wines tend to be blends of the different varieties.

Average sugar (readings taken late September of each year)

• 2005 – Merlot 244g, Cabernet 222g
• 2009 – Merlot 253g, Cabernet 216g
• 2010 – Merlot 242g, Cabernet 225g
• 2015 – Merlot 264g, Cabernet 247g
• 2016 – Merlot 223g Cabernet 246g

Average acidity

• 2005 – 2.9g Merlot, 4.2g Cabernet
• 2009 – 3.1g Merlot, 3.8g Cabernet
• 2010 – 3g Merlot, 3.6g Cabernet
• 2015- 3g Merlot, 3.7g Cabernet
• 2016 – 3g Merlot, 3.2g Cabernet

Smart investments? A brief guide based on Liv-ex data

In terms of where your money would have been best spent among these five vintages, Liv-ex figures show that Bordeaux 2005 is the winner by quite some margin.

Its data shows that, for the wines tracked, average pound sterling prices have risen by 130.1% between en primeur release and October 2018.

A look at the other vintages suggests that you can’t just blame longevity. For example, although 2009 has shown the second highest average price increase since release, that rise is 33% – well below the 2005s.

The 2015 vintage wines have so far seen the third biggest rise since en primeur release, according to Liv-ex data, with your average Château first wine up by 30.3%.

The recently 2016 wines have seen an average rise of 11.9% on average since en primeur release, albeit it’s only been 18 months.

That leaves 2010 bringing up the rear, with a pretty measly 6.6% increase since primeur release on average, at least in pound sterling currency.

The 2010 vintage was, of course, eye-wateringly expensive at en primeur and is still showing a loss for a number of wines, including the five First Growths of Lafite, Mouton, Margaux, Latour* and Haut-Brion, which were on average 18.7% below their release price.

That said, the 2009 First Growth wines are even worse, at around 25% below their en primeur release price, on average.

Most readers of these pages will be aware of the fine wine market free-fall from mid-2011 onwards. Although recent years have seen a recovery, the above figures underline that it is certainly possible to be too expensive for the market to bear.

Of the Liv-ex groupings, it’s the Second Wines that have generally done the best across five of these vintages, with an average price rise of 120.7% since primeur release.

This is followed, among ‘first wines’, by the Right Bank 53.3%, then Left Bank at 38.4%.

First Growths stand at an average rise of 10.2% over the five vintages combined.

Sweet wines, meaning Sauternes and Barsac, was the only category showing a drop overall, with average prices over the five vintages down 22.3% versus their opening prices.

*Latour is of course now outside of the en primeur system, having left in 2012, although that only affects the 2015 and 2016 vintages in this analysis.

Individual Estates: Consistent performers?

According to Liv-ex, the wine over the five featured vintages that has shown the best price rise was Petit Mouton, with a 206% price rise on average since release, followed by Carruades de Lafite, at 177.2%.

Le Pin was just below at 116.2%, with Pavillon Rouge next up with a 106.8% average rise, followed by Carmes Haut-Brion showing an average rise over the five vintages of 100.6%.

Among the top 10 biggest rises, the other ‘mere humans can afford’ labels include Clos Fourtet (average rise 95.9%), Smith Haut Lafitte (average 93.3%) and Beychevelle (89%). La Fleur Petrus and Canon were just behind, ranked at 11 and 12 respectively.

When you look at individual vintages alongside the Châteaux, it’s 2005 that takes nine out of the 10 top spots for price rises since release.

This is headed up by Carruades de Lafite, which came out at £410 per case of 12 in London and was recently at just over £3,000, giving a whopping 632% price rise.

Petit Mouton takes both second and ninth spot for the 2005 and 2009 vintage, with the highest non-2^nd wine going to Beychevelle 2005, which released at £278 for a case of 12 and was recently seen at £2,000.

Future Values?

Where will these vintages go from here?

Even though 2005 has risen so high, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t further to go, because the wines are extremely well structured and will continue to become more scarce.

In many cases, the 2005s are not far off current prices of the 2016s, again based on Liv-ex data in pounds sterling.

There is also something to be said for future values in 2009.

Although the wines themselves are not as long lasting as 2010 – remember that low acidity? – the fact that they are enjoyable to drink now means that they are being opened, which in turn means there will soon be less of them on the market.

It’s also worth remembering that when looking for value, it’s not simply about vintages but about individual estate’s pricing history.

There are a few estates whose 2016 prices have recently been similar to, or even below, their 2005 release price.

Ch Pape Clement, for example, released at £850 in the UK market for a case of 12 in 2005 and at £790 in 2016. The current price of Pape Clement 2005 was around £1,650.

So is this a rare example of an estate leaving some margin for growth for the purchaser? Impossible to know, of course, but at least it’s cheering to see someone giving it a chance.

Editor’s note: Pessac and Graves 2016 wines yet to be tasted in-bottle. Updated reviews of several top St-Emilion and Pomerol 2016 wines were also outstanding at time of publication.

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