The Wines
2025 has produced wonderful wines in Bordeaux across all styles and regions. What is surprising is the style of the wines which, after a very hot summer with very little rain between April and September, is fresh with lowish alcohol. It’s this combination of ripe fruit with fine tannic structure, fresh acidity and alcohols around 13.5% or lower which give this vintage its unique character – the upsides of a hot vintage without the drawbacks, leading to ‘perfumed, aromatic, joyful wines’ according to Bruno Borie of Ducru Beaucaillou. This also leads to great versatility as many wines can be approached young but will have the capacity and balance to age for many years. Comparisons are with many of the best recent vintages 2009, 2010, 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2022 with many going for a cross of 2022 and 2023. You can find an argument for differing from all of these vintages as it very much has its own unique stamp, but this is the kind of company that it is keeping.
To run through the regions and styles, we thought that in the Médoc Pauillac was a particular highpoint with the high percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon here leading to consistently excellent wines with fruit and structure. The Mouton stable shone here amongst others. St Estèphe was also generally successful as long as the tannins were managed-Montrose was particularly successful. Usually very consistent, St-Julien was more mixed although Léoville Las-Cases has made a wine of first growth quality, and the Barton wines have excelled as ever. Margaux showed good quality across the board, led by a sublime Château Margaux. Pessac-Léognan seemed to be more difficult with many wines struggling to control their tannins although Haut-Bailly has made one of the wines of the vintage.
On the right bank Pomerol is very successful particularly those on the water retaining clay, Vieux-Château-Certan making a wine of supreme elegance and balance. St-Emilion is more mixed with care needing to be taken to control acidity levels on the limestone soil. The best properties such as Canon, Ausone and Bel-Air Monange have managed this superbly producing wines with tension, balance and vivacity.
The white wines promise a lot, and the best, such as those from the Domaine de Chevalier stable, have great drive and balance and sometimes even a touch more alcohol than the reds. Sauternes seem to be virtually universally excellent, with plenty of botrytis together with good sugar levels and the freshness of the vintage.
Market Conditions
It’s an obvious thing to say, but these wines are being released into a very uncertain market. Few wanted to know about the 2024 vintage, but at least we now have wines of a much higher quality, although there are not many of them due to low yields across the region. There is, however, plenty of stock of previous vintages and most seem to realise that the wines will have to be very well priced in order to sell. This may well mean being at a similar price or below those of last year. If that turns out to be the case, there will be some bargains to be had.
The Weather
As always, it’s the weather that shapes the vintage, although often it’s partly the weather of the previous year, which in this case led to small flower clusters and so to the low yields, mostly no more than 20-25hl/ha, particularly in the Médoc. The first part of the year was fairly damp, but flowering took place in good conditions. From mid-April on, rainfall was below average, with the heat building up as June went on, with the number of days over 30 degrees only surpassed in 2003. This led to small berries with little juice and thick skins, further reducing yields and leading to concentrated wines with high levels of tannins. As the heat carried on, vines just shutdown and did not carry on the ripening process, so keeping a degree of freshness. Rain arrived at the end of August and early September, too late to affect yield greatly, but freshened the vines up and allowed grapes to be harvested in good conditions. A mixture of sunshine and showers in Sauternes in the Autumn led to the perfect conditions for botrytis.