After nine days tasting en primeur samples in Bordeaux for Le Figaro, and conversations with countless winemakers, managing directors, and owners, Ella Lister shares her overview of the 2024 vintage. Having tasted 574 wines with the help of her colleague Béatrice Delamotte, she summarises all the most salient elements of the vintage, from the weather, what it meant in terms of viticulture and vinification, through to the resulting style (and quantity) of wine.

If France is a mostly Catholic country, Bordeaux is a Protestant stronghold, and 2024 is a decidedly protestant vintage in Bordeaux. The wines are restrained and vertical in nature, usually balanced, sometimes austere. They are low in alcohol, at around 13% or lower. A far cry from the sweet, rich hedonism of 2018 or 2022. But what they do have in spades is flavour and personality, the identity of each cru not masked by a larger-than-life vintage character.

“I’ve never eaten so many grapes in the vineyard,” recounted Eric Kohler enthusiastically, Technical Director at Château Lafite, explaining, "This vintage has an incredible taste, and many other great, better vintages, don't have this". The 2024 vintage is a completely mixed bag in terms of quality, but the best wines at all levels manage to tame a zippy acidity – sharing crunchy red fruit – and harness the best of savouriness, greenness, and bitterness – boasting a delightful floral sappy quality and often salinity on the finish.

This refreshing, salty character is nicely captured in Château Montrose’s tagline for the vintage: “Atlantic Spray”, which could also be taken as a euphemism for the wet weather during 2024.  Perilous conditions led to this heterogenous vintage, reminding some producers of the 20th century, not the globally warmed 21st. Following a mild, wet winter, came more rain in spring, then a cool, cloudy, but dryer summer, and then yet more rain in September, or as Pierre-Olivier Clouet, Managing Director of Château Cheval Blanc summarised the vintage: "Rainfall, rainfall, rainfall, and rainfall." Across in Pomerol, Château Rouget’s owner, Edouard Labruyère confirmed that 2024 was the property’s “most humid vintage ever, with 1400mm of rain, versus an average of 780mm.”

This led to aggressive mildew, earlier than ever seen before. At both L’Évangile and Lafleur in Pomerol, it was the first time they had ever needed to spray the vineyards in March. Down in Pessac-Léognan, Fabien Teitgen, Managing Director at Smith Haut Lafitte had, “never seen an attack of mildew so early and so strong”. Over in the Médoc it was the same story from Saint-Estèphe in the north to Margaux in the south. Cos d’Estournel sprayed 26 times to save the crop (“It worked!”, exclaimed Dominique Arangoïts). Pontet-Canet sprayed 31 times (using 5.7kg copper per hectare in total), spraying as early as 4am and as late as 9pm ("It cost us a lot in chocolatines and pizza," quipped Mathieu Bessonnet, Technical Director). Claire Villars-Lurton sprayed 28 times at Haut-Bages Libéral, deploying 6kg of copper per hectare, while her husband, Gonzague Lurton used 7kg over 31 sprays at Durfort-Vivens.

The maximum copper allowance is 28kg per hectare over seven years, equating to 4kg per annum on average, so a lot of châteaux under organic farming will be hoping for a dry 2025 in order to make up their deficit. “Our spray has less copper: 50g-100g vs 300g-400g for a normal spray,” explained Teitgen. Smith Haut Lafitte, an early adopter of biodynamics, complements the classic copper mildew treatment with an infusion of buckthorn and horsetail as well as an oak bark decoction. “We had a meeting where I told Daniel and Florence [Cathiard] we could end up with no crop at all,” recounted Teitgen, “and we decided to stay in organic farming nonetheless!”.

But mildew was not the only scourge. Coulure was also rife, meaning that, according to Couderc, “everyone lost a lot of yield, whether they’re organic or not.” Mildew and coulure combined led to the lowest yields since 1991, averaging 35 hl/ha, which would later prove a boon for ripening and therefore quality. Some of the lowest yields included 16 hl/ha at Château Latour and just 10 hl/ha for its third wine, Pauillac de Château Latour, and 14 hl/ha at Rouget. Others managed to make as much as 46 hl/ha (Brane-Cantenac), 40 hl/ha (Le Prieuré), or 38 hl/ha (Montrose). For Nicolas Glumineau, Managing Director of Pichon Comtesse de Lalande, it was a “half crop,” due to “mildew on the merlot and coulure on the Cabernet Sauvignon”. “But that's also what saved the vintage,” he points out, as “the bunches were not too densely packed so there was no rot.”

At Petrus, 25-30% of the crop was lost to coulure in May / June, “but having naturally fewer berries helped us to reach a good level of maturity despite less sunshine during the summer,” explained Olivier Berrouet, Director, who added, “looser clusters when botrytis arrived slowed down its progression and gave us a few more days of ripening.” And it was achieving full – and even – ripening that was the holy grail in 2024, after so many vintages of guarding against over-ripeness. If braving September rain to ripen grapes fully was important (picking later even at the expense of volume), it all started with the flowering several months before, which across most of the Bordelais was heterogenous to say the least. Clouet tells us, “you can understand the whole of the vintage from that,” explaining, “you needed five to six weeks for full flowering, the same again for veraison, and again for ripening.”

While a few châteaux told us they did not suffer this uneven flowering (Haut-Bailly), or that its impact was homogenised by veraison (Le Pin), most reported this hangover from drawn-out flowering that lasted right up until harvest, resulting in bunches containing grapes at several different stages of ripeness. Eutopia Estates CEO, Pierre Graffeuille told us the greatest task at Montrose was removing “parts of bunches where grapes were still green at 80% of veraison”, from 20th July to mid-August, as well as removing grapes affected by mildew in August. He then went on to list a whole host of jobs in the vineyards that helped them manage the difficult conditions: “we reduced leaf cover, left grass between the vines to try to create water stress, had a higher canopy to improve evapotranspiration and photosynthesis, then removed leaves on the west side when we got back from holidays.”

At Rauzan-Ségla, Managing Director,  Nicolas Audebert was not in a loquacious mood but had one word for us: “viticulture”. Grape sorting began in the vineyards throughout the growing season and of course at harvest, but it continued on the sorting tables in three guises: manual, optical, and – the new watchword on many winemaker’s lips this year – “densimetric”. A bath with a sugar water solution set to the desired minimum sugar level (e.g. 12%) allows grapes with a lower alcohol potential to be cast out. This seemed especially popular on the Right Bank – although it was by no means employed by all, Le Pin and Lafleur being notable exceptions – and in Pessac.

At Les Carmes Haut-Brion, Guillaume Pouthier, Managing Director, referred back to the heterogenous flowering (which lasted for 20 days instead of the usual10), declaring, “the only way to sort between riper grapes and underripe ones in a single bunch is in the cellar with a densimentric bath.” This led to a final yield of 24 hl/ha from a potential of 46 hl/ha. At Beau-Séjour Bécot, owner, Julien Barthe agreed: “you couldn’t necessarily see visually that grapes were underripe.” Médoc properties seem to have had less recourse to the system, with Audebert going as far as decrying the new fad, insisting that, “the only way is with hands, eyes, tastebuds, and time.”

Our comprehensive tastings showed us it was possible to make very good wine with or without densimetric sorting, although there are probably fewer examples of poor wines made where the tactic was employed. Either way, the gift of a dry summer undoubtedly saved the vintage: as they say, “Août fait le moût” (August makes the must). In Pessac-Léognan, August rainfall was at average levels, while Saint-Estèphe and Pauillac saw just half the average rainfall for the month of August. In Pomerol, Juliette Couderc, Estate Manager at Château L’Évangile referred to a “classical Atlantic summer”.

The resulting musts were nonetheless low in sugar – many châteaux topped up with chaptalisation (though not Les Carmes Haut-Brion, Le Pin, or Le Boscq, to name just a few exceptions), or used reverse osmosis to remove water (e.g. Haut-Simard), or saignée. They were also high in acidity: “We haven't seen acidity that high recently,” remarked Jean-Emmanuel Danjoy, Estate Manager at Mouton Rothschild, where the grand vin has a pH of 3.7. Wood was also a key factor, with some opting to maintain their usual 100% new barrels in order to help flesh out the wine – though potentially with a shorter élevage, and others reducing the proportion of new oak (e.g. Beauséjour at 40% new oak vs 60-70% over the last three years).

Tannin levels were also lower in 2024 than Bordeaux has become accustomed to over the last few, big vintages. Nicolas Labenne, Technical Director at Lynch-Bages called it a “return to normality after five years of very high IPTs”. However, these tannins were not always ripe, with a greater potential for astringency, meaning soft extraction was obligatory. “It would have been very dangerous to extract too much,” said Teitgen, leading to “bad tannins and a hole in middle of the mouth.” Kohler agreed: “In this vintage there was the good, and then lots of bad all around that we absolutely didn’t want to seek out during vinification." Stéphane Derenoncourt, consultant at Château Pavie-Macquin, told us they performed the lowest extraction for 30 years. Overall, the Right Bank has more flesh and less astringency than the Left Bank, although the latter still turned out several of the wines of the vintage.

In conclusion, 2024 is undoubtedly superior to the decried 2013 in quality, and more akin to 2017 and 2021. The Bordelais are saying it is better, and for some wines this is true. Indeed, IPTs in 2024, though lower than the recent norm, are higher than 2017 in many cases, and at 65 at Château Margaux even higher than 1996, 2001, and even the lauded 1982. In general, 2024s will be approachable early, though acidity levels should help them age gracefully.

Winemakers were reluctant to proffer comparable vintages. “There is no comparable red vintage,” states Teitgen, adding, “we have more ripeness than in previous ‘not big’ vintages.” Labenne referred to a similar profile to 2001 and 2011. The general consensus was that 2024 is a return to a classical style but with better quality. “This vintage goes back to old regular style,” said Alexis Leven-Mentzelopoulos, musing, “in the end, it goes back to traditional Château Margaux.” At Vieux Château Certan, Technical Director, Guillaume Thienpont, concurs: “We had to relearn what we knew in the 80s and 90s.”

Clouet summarised, "This is a vintage from the past, from the 70s or 80s, but thanks to the technology of today, our shareholder's deep pockets, vinifying plots separately, etc., we are able to preserve the best of the past without the rusticity and the greenness." The deep pockets he refers to are Bernard Arnault’s, with Cheval Blanc part of the LVMH giant. Describing his 2024 experience at Châteaux Rauzan-Ségla and Canon, owned by Chanel, Audebert talks of “human, technical and financial commitment.”

My advice: don’t dismiss 2024, which offers up some exquisite gems, but navigate carefully. Terroir, expertise, and financial means dictated which crus were able to dominate a tricky vintage. The best wines are not so protestant after all, giving enormous pleasure. In the words of Berrouet, “It's not a great vintage, I won't say that, but it gives pleasure.” And who could ask for more in these turbulent times?

Ella Lister’s top 33 wines can be viewed here, while all 500+ tasting notes and scores will be published on the Figaro Vin (see here) website next week.