Just back from Bordeaux. Wow! 2025 is an impressive vintage. It is also a serious one. At the top level, the best wines have lots of extract, structure and intensity and they will demand time in bottle. It is classic vintage in the best sense. But 2022 it is not. Minerality and tannin are very much in evidence. Alcohols are refreshingly around thirteen to thirteen-and-a-half degrees. There is also good acidity. This makes them feel drier on the palate. For me, there are echoes of 2016, 2010 and 2005, though winemaking is much more precise than in the latter two vintages and the growing seasons have their differences too. Great wines have been made on both the right and left banks of Bordeaux. Where there is variability it probably from stems from properties who struggled with phenolic ripeness owing to the drought and lack of water in the growing season. Wines from the best limestone and clay spots are phenomenal. Some properties where the vines are on sandy, drier soils struggled in the conditions, but this is not universally true, and these wines were in the minority amongst the two hundred plus I tasted. I’ll publish more detailed notes in the coming days and weeks.

So, 2025 is an exciting vintage, at many estates possibly a great one, but one released against a backdrop of Bordeaux experiencing some of the toughest trading conditions in thirty years. Demand is slack and prices are soft, with a string of recent excellent Bordeaux vintages already available and drinking nicely. As I’ve said before, there’s never been a better time to buy Bordeaux. Conversely, this is probably the most challenging time to release a Bordeaux vintage since the mid-1990s.