St-Emilion 2020 in bottle: overview plus top-scoring wines

A large number of extremely good quality and exciting wines from St-Emilion in 2020 from estates on water-retaining soils that gave enough nourishment to the vines at critical times. The best are extremely aromatic with floral and ripe fruit scents, richly concentrated and deep cores with silky smooth, well-integrated tannins.

The less successful wines however show austerity, tightness and lean harsh tannins and / or extremely high alcohols with some above 15% and even 15.5% ABV. Harvesting at the right time and careful extraction were key here in 2020.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the top St-Emilion 2020 in-bottle wines

Average yields in St-Emilion in 2002 were 36.7hl/ha, lower than 2018 at 39.7hl/ha and 2019 at 43hl/ha with a 10-year-average of 39.1hl/ha.

Spring was warm and humid with February, April and May warmer than average (3.5°C , and 2.2°C respectively) which caused a large onset of mildew. Estates also saw two nights of localised frost at the end of March with generally rainy conditions throughout the month. From early April the weather remained hot, sunny and dry, with a drought period lasting 55 days between June 20 and August 9-10. Crucially, some vines saw rain between 9-14 August helping restart growth. Nevertheless, some grapes were raisened leading to crop losses. An early and quick harvest started in the first half of September in some estates with sunny, warm, dry days and cool nights giving maturity and freshness to the grapes. Rain came at the end of September.

For Frédéric Faye, managing director at Château Figeac, the ‘main risk was to maintain freshness and gentle extraction’.

‘2020 is the most complete of the three warm vintages’ he said, adding ‘maybe due to the knowledge we have now it is the most precise. We learned a lot from the previous vintages and so we managed the extraction, choice of barrel and ageing a little differently.’

The 2020 vintage at Figeac was produced in a temporary cellar but with new vats of varying sizes, all of which were incorporated into the finalised building for the 2021 vintage.

At Château Cheval Blanc, technical director Pierre-Olivier Clouet explained that the use of cover crop for the first time helped decrease the ground temperatures in the vineyards and helped retain water more efficiently to preserve humidity.

‘It was important to use not to have soil that was ploughed, not to have too much heat on the soil and not to let all the water run off straight away,’ he said.

‘We had to pay huge attention to achieve a balanced veraison with careful morning-side leaf pulling. We want to pick the grapes at the best time, when everything is fresh, for this we need optimum homogeneity throughout the season.’

When it came to harvest Clouet said; ‘The second important point was the capacity to pick quickly. For me, it was like cooking, when you have the meat in the casserole and the flame is high, the speed of maturation is not the same if the flame is low. We picked every day from the third of September and every day we had the sensation that the day before was better. It was almost 36 degrees celsius outside with 14 hours of sun per day and 53 plots to pick – we ran in the vines.

‘The challenge was how to compensate the excess – the alcohol, the power of the tannins, the density of the fruit. We had cold chambers for the grapes and 14 different sized tanks to match with the plots. No cool maceration but low temperature fermentations’.

A total of 17% of the yield was declassified by Cheval Blanc in 2020. ‘In an excessive year you can’t use a large proportion of your vines because they don’t have the roots to support the excess drought. When vines are less than 10 years old in a dry summer they suffer,’ he said.

Top 12 St-Emilion 2020 wines:

Château Troplong Mondot, (1er Grand Cru Classé B), 100 points

Château Bélair-Monange, (1er Grand Cru Classé B), 99 points

Château Canon, (1er Grand Cru Classé B), 99 points

Château Ausone, (1er Grand Cru Classé A), 98 points

Château Cheval Blanc, (1er Grand Cru Classé A), 98 points

Château Figeac, (1er Grand Cru Classé B), 98 points

Château Larcis Ducasse, (1er Grand Cru Classé B), 98 points

Château Angélus, (1er Grand Cru Classé A), 97 points

Château Pavie, (1er Grand Cru Classé A), 97 points

Château Beauséjour Duffau-Lagarrosse, (1er Grand Cru Classé B), 97 points

Château Pavie Macquin, (1er Grand Cru Classé B), 97 points

Clos Fourtet, (1er Grand Cru Classé B), 97 points

SCORE TABLE: top-scoring 349 wines with 92 points or above

Individual appellation analysis and top-scoring wines

Margaux 2020 | St-Julien 2020| Pauillac 2020 | Pessac & Graves 2020 | St-Emilion 2020 | Pomerol 2020 | 

See all Bordeaux 2020 in-bottle wines in score order

See tasting notes and scores for the top St-Emilion 2020 in-bottle wines

The following wines all scored 95 points or above. 

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