After a week on the Place de Bordeaux, our buyers share their thoughts on this memorable year, their impressions of the wines tasted and deliver their final verdict: Absolutely, definitely not to be missed. Dive deaper into an experience they won’t soon forget.

It first must be said that over the past year, the Bordeaux vineyards have gone through extreme climatic conditions including episodes of spring frost, hailstorms, record heat waves and to top it all off, long periods of drought. Many industry players are still today trying to figure out how they managed such masterful results when all evidence in the field suggested the opposite.

A common observation among the Bordeaux vineyard artisans is that the vine has shown great resilience in 2022. It clearly demonstrated that it has been able to adapt by learning from the last vintages. Surely a sustainable and more sensitive management of the vineyards (less work on the soils, presence of plant coverage, adding islands of freshness, less de-leafing, etc.) by the teams has helped throughout the seasons, but the vine has clearly decided to adjust its vegetative cycle to this new climatic reality. Unlike the trees and other plants which were bruised, the vines were still verdant amid the drought!

Several important players of this beautiful region have told us that for them, this is a historic vintage... unheard of in the last 50 years! From the first tastings, we observed great complexity as well as surprising freshness in the vast majority of the wines presented: It is indeed true that 2022 is a superb vintage!

Over the course of these numerous tasting sessions, we noticed that this is, first and foremost, a vintage where right bank Merlots clearly stand out from the crowd. Whether in Saint-Émilion or Pomerol, you’ll find structured, textured wines of great elegance and great finesse. On the left bank, a little more heterogeneous, we were quickly sublimated by the terroirs of Pauillac, Saint-Julien and Saint-Estèphe which presented powerful and complex wines, but also harmonious with a vibrant freshness. The white wines are marked by great sapidity, a very high level of complexity and by the same freshness characteristic of the vintage.

The greatest of all time?

In short, a title in La Revue du Vin de France of June 2023 can very well summarize this vintage: “2022 Bordeaux Futures: What if it was the greatest?1. It can indeed be appreciated when young since the wines are marked by a sunny richness and a harmonious freshness, making them surprisingly accessible. However, it will be totally appropriate to leave these bottles dormant in your cellars, under your good care, for many years. One thing is certain, do not miss this year!

By Maxime Desjardins, France Buyer and Gilles Goulet, France Account Director.

 

(1)  La Revue du Vin de France, no. 671, June 2023