Bordeaux 2022 – The best ever…. again? The clos pre-report
En primeur, the system of futures which propels Bordeaux as a wine region and vinous financial hub is one of those quirks of the calendars in the wine trade. Whatever the noises are, or the weather has been, in the previous year, the global wine trade flocks to Bordeaux for their annual fix, the tasting of hard-to-judge barrel samples to ascertain just how good a vintage is. Bumping into friends from the trade across the week you swap tips, agree on wines which blew you away (and those that didn’t) and guess at prices. Then, we all come back to our offices and wait to be led by critics’ scores and release prices.
For the assiduous researcher, however, en primeur weeks remains the single greatest opportunity to assess for yourself just how good a vintage is, to compare appellation by appellation and neighbouring properties side-by-side. You can quiz the winemakers themselves, speak to the commercial directors and barter with your negociants. I was fortunate that the 2016 campaign, one of the finest vintages ever, was my first foray into tasting this bright purple, tannic juice and I was pleasantly surprised to sample wines which were ripe and supremely balanced already. Vintage quality has been up and down since, but if you believe the opinions of just about everyone who has tried the wines already, then Bordeaux 2022 may just been one of the best vintages ever… again.
Feeling hot, hot hot
2022 is an outlier of a vintage in that is was not just supremely hot, but also very dry, one of the driest years on record: a remarkable 38 days saw temperatures of 32˚C plus.
The graph above, produced by the brilliant Gavin Quinney of Château Bauduc shows how stark the numbers were in 2022, with seven out of eight months seeing substantially less rain than the 30 year average, and seven out of eight months seeing temperatures well above the 30 year norm. More heat and less water led to extreme vine stress, only saved by biblical amounts of rain at the end of June – quite literally a Godsend. It was this timely deluge which proved critical, with the rainwater seeping into the underlying terroirs. Properties over clay or limestone fared extremely well, with those soils able to retain the water for use by the vines in those drought-hit months – one can therefore also assume that gravelly and sandy soils which drain more freely would be less favourable, though the proof will as always be in the tasting.
The chart above shows the extreme average temperatures throughout the growing season in 2022, with most months well above the 10 & 30-year averages, and some months (in gold) the highest temperatures recorded. In the heat the vines struggled, producing fewer bunches of smaller berries with thick skins. In some areas, bouts of hail also obliterated grapes in the vineyards, diminishing the harvestable amounts.
If one of the words of the 2022 campaign is ‘heat’ then a second must surely be ‘scarcity’. Because of the extreme weather events recounted so far, 2022 saw one of the smallest overall production levels of wine in Bordeaux’s recent history going back to 1986, with a mere 393 million litres of wine produced against a 10-year average of 487 million litres, a shortfall of about 650m bottles of wine.
Adding to the meteorological elements will be the sustained trend of Châteaux increasingly holding back stock from each vintage, leading to greater scarcity when it comes to the en primeur campaign. The table below from Liv-Ex is sobering, particularly for negociants and brokers, as it shows the year-on-year average stock reductions across the board by producers. To give an example, Château Lafite Rothschild produces an average of 20,000 cases of its Grand Vin each year, as of last year the amount released to the trade will have decreased, supposedly, to around 4,880 cases, under a quarter of average production.
For those looking to build cellar portfolios whose value might go up over time, these reductions can serve to exacerbate the inverse supply pressures that drive the Fine Wine market at the top end. To use the made-up example of Lafite Rothschild, less Lafite to go around makes those cases in circulation far more in demand, and only available at a premium. What can be respected is that producers like Lafite are holding back stock to mature in its cellars, ready for release when the time comes to those increasing number of clients who wish to enjoy rather than trade these magnificent wines.
On the subject of drinking, it is a maxim that it is in the best years when everyone makes good wines and with obvious caveats regarding more free-draining soils taken into consideration, I find it particularly exciting that I will inevitably unearth gorgeous Bordeaux for consumption at home for, hopefully, extremely reasonable prices. As more clients see the benefit of buying cases of wine en primeur at £10-£25 a bottle in bond, two to three years ahead of the physical market, Clos stands ready to find vinous gems, real stars of the vintage that won’t break the bank.
Conclusion
It is hard to say with any real certainty what I will experience in Bordeaux during en primeur week, but my week of criss-crossing the region will enable me to see if this ripe, unctuous vintage delivers in the glass. My expectation from those I have spoken to is that I will try many beguiling wines, with some estates making their finest ever. When it comes to prices, with interest rates for Châteaux and negociants rising from under 1% to over 3% in under a year, it is hoped that any price increases won’t be too egregious to stifle a keen buying market. A well-priced campaign, if the quality stands up to scrutiny, could see everyone win, from consumer to producer. As ever, Liv-Ex’s ‘fair value’ tool, which benchmarks new releases from an estate against previous vintages using critics’ scores and release prices, will be key to establishing the Châteaux which really do deliver the most.
I will be updating this blog all week with content as I taste the wines from the 2022 vintage and you can also follow on Instagram for up to the minute videos at @closfw