The challenging harvest of Bordeaux 2024 draws to a close

Across Bordeaux, the challenging harvest of 2024 is drawing to a close – these secateurs in the above photo at Château Dauzac were used to bring in the last grapes on Friday October 11, the same day at Phélan Ségur in St Estèphe, Giscours in Margaux, and many other key estates that had managed to hold on through the rains of late September and early October to wait for clearer skies to ripen the Cabernet grapes.

‘We have seen vintages like this many times before,’ says Alexander van Beek at Château Giscours, ‘and it’s a great reminder that we can rely on our gravel soils in the Médoc for drainage, and for ripening – even more so today with the precision in the way we approach harvest. The vinification this will surely surprise us all…. Wait and see!’.

Unlike the vast majority of recent years, the Indian summer that has arrived this week in Bordeaux was too late for most of the vineyard. The local newspapers are full of reports that September was the rainiest for 30 years across the Gironde,  the most rain since 1994, with an average of 130mm in the month of August 29 to September 27.

Temperatures were not much better, staying at an average of 21.4C instead of the usual 24C, according to Météo-France Mérignac. Not great for building sugar levels in the grapes, but the cool temperatures proved useful in the face of rain, slowing down any spread of rot, giving vineyards a fighting chance until the warmer weather returned over the last week.

The impact of this, along with serious selection to maintain quality, means we are looking at a low yielding year, even less than was thought one month ago, with the yield likely to be somewhere around 14% lower than 2023, impacted also by the 8,000-10,000ha of vines that have been uprooted over the past year – giving  hope for the producers in less prestigious appellations that price of bulk wines may rise.

David Pernet of Sovivins wrote in his summary, ‘Taking care of the vineyards and making wine this year seemed more like a feat of endurance rather than normal farming or oenology’.

Key points include:

• The wettest winter since 2000, combined with warm temperatures that meant early budding – 12 days earlier than average, and 1.5C warmer on average than the last 25 years – with a threat of mildew even while the frost risk wasn’t over. For those of you who were here in Bordeaux during En Primeur, you might remember this pretty unheard of situation that meant many exhausted faces from winemakers who had been up all night fighting frost, while looking to begin treating against mildew… all while welcoming thousands of tasters to their estates every morning (to taste the luckily largely excellent 2023).
• The rainy winter (a record since 2000 with almost 900mm recorded in the Pessac weather station between October 1 2023 and 31 March 2024) meant difficulty in usual vineyard work at that time of year, from working the soils to seeding inter-row plants. The rain also meant a lack of photosythensis in the leaves, so some pale green vines and a general struggle to get ripening underway, although to balance this, many producers kept grasses growing between the rows to help increase competition for water – this was an extremely important step in the vintage.
• Things got better in April, with generous flowering, and there was another period of good weather from end of May to June 13 meaning many young plots of vines managed an impressive fruit set, but generally speaking from mid-April to mid-July, temperatures were cooler and rainier than usual, and there was plenty of uneven berry setting, particularly impacting the Merlot grapes, and particularly older vines.
• Mildew pressure continued through much of the summer, and the pressure to treat the vines was high – impacting organic producers of course, but few people were spared.
• If that wasn’t enough, there were local incidents of hail (May 18 in Saint-Estèphe, June 17 in the northern Médoc, June 19 in Fronsac and around northern Médoc, June 29 Saint-Laurent-Médoc).
• It took until June 30 for summer to arrive, and even then the best weather only came from mid July, lasting until late August and finally allowing the leaves and shoots to stop growing, and for hydric stress to kick in on most terroirs. Skins and tannins were beginning to ripen, and hopes were rising.
• The last two weeks of July were above average in temperature (for the first time since April), and by mid-August almost all colour change of the grapes was completed, with potential for a good quality if late harvest year…
• As temperatures dropped during the nights towards the end of August, the grape skins thickened, and there was a rapid of development of anthocyanins and polyphenols, responsible for colours and tannins in the final grapes – but again, meant that sugars were rising slowly.
• … ripening continued with good weather right up until September 20, and there was plenty of reason for optimism, until the rains returned. The majority of vineyards began picking their Merlot on September 19 and 20, with most Cabernets coming in from September 30 (in all honesty, earlier than most people wanted, except on particularly well-draining warm soils).
• The number of days with a temperature above 30C was exactly on the 30-year average – we have, however, been conditioned since 2018 to expect way more beach days that we got this summer.

What are we going to find?

• A marked difference between terroirs, and châteaux.
• Generally speaking lower alcohol levels and higher acidities than in recent vintages (there will almost certainly be adjustments made in the cellars). Almost all Merlots reached 13%abv ptoential naturally, while Cabernets are closer to 12-12.5%abv.
• Beautiful aromatics from the best locations, but there’s no point pretending that there won’t be vegetal notes where the grapes were not able to fully ripen.
• There were a few things that made a crucial difference. Attention, team work, reactivity were all key, particularly when it came to dealing with mildew (the number of treatments were among the highest on record). It was also important to respect minimum working of the soils to keep as much crop cover as possible to mitigate the abundance of available water.
  General terroir characteristics will be key, where well-drained soils clearly had an advantage,  and this year, in contrast to vintages such as 2022, careful work stripping back leaves and exposing the grapes was extremely important.
• As a result of all of this, harvest dates were extremely varied.
• It is of course impossibly early to say how the wines are going to taste En Primeur, but it’s a timely reminder perhaps that the great and very good vintages in Bordeaux, as elsewhere, deserve to be celebrated – and winemakers deserve full credit for keeping going in the difficult years.

Thanks to Pascal Hénriot in Union Girondine and David Pernet for the figures.