By Guy Seddon
Small can be beautiful
Here we go again. As winter becomes spring, Burgundy morphs into Bordeaux. The word is that it’s going to be another early, quick campaign. The lower prices of last year’s 2023 vintage found some favour, but far from universal success. Outcomes were split between châteaux who got the pricing right and sold reasonably well… and those who didn’t and fell flat.
Following ‘Liberation Day’ in the United States, we stand on the threshold of a brave new world (again). The ramifications for global trade and, in our little niche, the distribution of wine, remain unknown. The mood is cautious, to say the least.
The 2024 vintage in Bordeaux is currently something of an enigma. The habitual fanfare has been conspicuous by its absence. We have tasted very little so it would be unfair, not to say impossible, to comment on the wines themselves. Our tastings begin this week.
The growing season was not easy, mildew being the principal culprit. A six-week spell of proper summer weather may yet prove to have been a saving grace. Ruthless sorting resulted in the smallest crop since 1991. But small can be beautiful.
The market
Before we ring the bell for another annual round of market commentary, we want to be clear that we love the wines of Bordeaux, just as we love the place and (most of) the people. C&B is a ‘Bordeaux house’ which does not delight in ‘Bordeaux bashing’.
For the four years from 2021-2024, Bordeaux’s average annual production was 500m bottles. This was down from 775m bottles for the period 2001-2010.[1] In other words, the region’s total output decreased by more than a third over the first quarter of the century. Although most of this wine would never have been offered en primeur, it sets the scene for a region undergoing consolidation.
As recently as a couple of decades ago, Bordeaux was THE wine region, against which all others were measured. If you loved wine, the chances are it was your point of reference, the region you would invoke when your formative bottles were asked for.
It is now faced with an ageing customer base, compounding the stagnation that has pervaded the world of fine wine for the past couple of years. Whilst the state of the broader fine wine market is linked to the global economy, Bordeaux’s specific issue is that it badly needs a fresh set of consumers. The wines themselves are not the problem – they have a universal appeal that is more than capable of finding favour again with a younger demographic. Bordeaux still produces some of the most beautiful fermented grape juice in the world. Although Cabernet/Merlot blends from an Atlantic climate need time to reach maturity, they are being made in a more accessible style than ever before. To be able to drink quality Bordeaux today from such recent vintages as 2017, 2019 or even 2022 would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Nonetheless, fewer drinkers now have the patience to bother with the en primeur game. And when the price advantage is minimal or non-existent, who can blame them?
How to attract a new generation of customers then? The answer is a combination of pricing, offer mechanics and communication. Taking pricing first, without wanting to sound like a broken record to those who are kind enough to read these pieces, release prices must persuade customers to buy the new vintage rather than an older case of equivalent quality. In the UK, where we enjoy high quality bonded storage, there are annual cellarage charges to factor in which, over a 20-year timespan, may eat up any profit on the wine itself.
Not all châteaux are getting this wrong – a recent analysis of release and market prices for select estates over the past five vintages shows that a handful of less-hallowed names are consistently releasing wine at astute prices. But the vast majority are not. Aside from the 2019 ‘Covid discount’ vintage, which sold strongly (in a pretty unique set of circumstances), pricing has been consistently too high every year since 2010. A proper reset is still needed.
Although last year’s Bordeaux 2023 releases went tolerably well for us at C&B, what success we had was driven wholly by the well-priced wines. It was a binary campaign – where prices were not compelling, customers simply didn’t buy. Understandably. The end point of such polarity is a Darwinian weeding out. The supply chain cannot absorb the excess for much longer before it either says no or goes pop.
Moving to offer mechanics, a more radical departure would be to offer the wines once they are physically available rather than en primeur. This comes with cashflow consequences but as seen from Burgundy’s ongoing move in this direction, in-bottle releases are easier to assess and allow quality-led estates to release a finished product to the market rather than a work in progress. From a customer’s perspective, it also shortens the time (slightly) between purchase and eventual uncorking.
Château Latour aimed to capitalise on a rising market by leaving the en primeur system before the 2012 vintage, to release future vintages ‘once ready for drinking’ (i.e. once prices had increased). Although this has proved a costly exercise, unlikely to be adopted by others any time soon, it does raise the question of whether a form of later release might make more sense. Outside the top tiers, châteaux run livrable lists of immediately available vintages. And there is no shortage of stock in négociants’ cellars, regularly offered to the trade. Some export markets already sell only physically available bottles. It is a short step for the Bordeaux machine to follow suit but – and here’s the rub – no one wants to have to hold and finance the stock.
As for communication, younger generations of wine lovers value experiences and knowledge over, or in addition to, simply amassing a collection. Bordeaux has finally begun to embrace this. It feels like winemakers and proprietors now see the need to engage with these new consumers, whether that be online or IRL (if you need to look that up, you are sort of making the point). We are optimists and believe that, like a super tanker turning around, Bordeaux will get there eventually. Or as a recent Wine Lister market survey put it, “The trend of declining confidence in Bordeaux has slowed this year.” Keep the faith – but keep the Champagne on ice for now.
The 2024 growing season
Here are some themes emerging from a few early sources. The initial report of Bordeaux specialist Jane Anson[2] is particularly useful – she sums up the vintage in one word: ‘sort’ (as in, it was key to sort the healthy grapes from the rest). The négociant Dubos produced a short precis of a 2024 tasting last December which included Domaine de Chevalier, Clos Fourtet, Grand Puy Lacoste and Branaire Ducru. And Bordeaux-based château owner and pundit Gavin Quinney has compiled his usual set of forensically detailed tables and charts.[3] We will put some flesh on these bones following our visits.
A mild and wet winter. Depending on your source, it was either 50% or 70% wetter than the 10-year average. Rain in the key months of May and September impacted both flowering and harvest.
Budburst was early but, happily, there was no frost damage. This was a battle that coincided with the 2023 vintage en primeur tastings. We remember the bizarre juxtaposition of orderly tasting rooms and, in the distance, the sight (and smell) of burning haystacks. And of being woken at night by the sound of anti-frost turbines starting up in the vineyards.
Mildew and rain. Heavy rain in March brought with it mildew pressure. This became a defining influence on the vintage. Quinney estimates that mildew accounted for 20–25% of the overall reduction in yield. For the March-September period, 2024 was the wettest of the previous 15 vintages.
Summer sun. Some good news! There was a “really good summer” from mid-July to the end of August – warm but not excessive, with above-average sunshine and cool nights. Temperatures were bang-on average for the time of year at this point.
A late vintage. Véraison (colour change) peaked in late July, some ten days later than in 2022 and 2023. Véraison continued until mid-August in some areas, with most of the Cabernet bunches still on the vine at the end of September.
A protracted, rainy harvest period. This continued through a wet September and into October for the reds (and sweet whites). The longed-for late-season burst of ripeness failed to materialise. As mentioned above, sorting therefore became crucial.
A small crop. Since 2020, Bordeaux has seen a series of short crops, due to frost (2017 and 2021), mildew (2018, 2021, 2023 and now 2024), and drought/heat (2022). Even in this context, 2024 is small (the smallest since 1991, not to labour the point…)
We are expecting wines of texture (due to thick skins) and crunchy red fruit character, with higher acidity and lower alcohol than average. Our few early glimpses of the vintage have supported this but, as always, we will report back after our upcoming six-day tasting marathon.
Bordeaux 2024 at C&B
In advance of the campaign, we will circulate a list of wines that we consider likely to represent good value, along with our estimated price ranges for those wines. These will be worked out wine by wine, with references to market prices of vintages including 2021, 2017, 2014 and 2013. This is not to say that we expect the 2024s to resemble them, but pricing needs to take its cue from these lower-priced vintages.
Although we are not running a pre-order system, please let us know if you are interested in certain wines at our target prices. We will send central mailings of the wines we believe deserve highlighting on the day they are released. In addition, there will be a weekly email summarising the releases of the past week.
Our online Bordeaux hub will be a central repository of our tasting notes, wines released and our commentary on them. Our C&B Bordeaux Unpicked podcast is available from your podcast provider of choice and for the complete picture, follow us on Instagram, where we will have a dedicated Bordeaux en primeur channel.
Please also make sure that you are signed up to receive our mailings. You can do this very easily, either by emailing your contact at C&B or by logging into your account online. We will send a reminder email on this at the beginning of the campaign.
We will be very selective in what we offer this year. As to how many good buys the vintage holds, only the next few weeks will tell. If there is one takeaway message for Bordeaux, it is that there is no better time for a wholesale reset on price.
Now to taste the wines. See you on the other side.
[1] https://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/bordeaux-2024-weather-and-crop-report
[2] https://janeanson.com/bordeaux-2024-what-to-expect
[3] https://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/bordeaux-2024-weather-and-crop-report