The 2022 Bordeaux vintage: a delicious mystery

“Vines, talk to us, please!” may be the call of the Bordeaux winery at the moment.

I have just returned from a brief dive into this year’s en primeur campaign, during which samples from the latest vintage were shown to thousands of traders from all over the world and dozens of commentators. The most common word to describe these embryonic 2022? “Amazing.” What was happening to the millions of Merlot and Cabernet vines growing in the Gironde department?

Last summer was scorching in France, especially in the southwest, with temperatures well above average throughout the growing season. Forest fires broke out in the Bordeaux region. Even more of a test for the vignerons, there was no rain from early July through the end of August, and rainfall totals were significantly below average every month except June. One would expect the wines that result from these sub-Saharan conditions to taste soupy and grilled like an Arcachon surfer.

The dry season has resulted in small, thick-skinned berries. This meant that the berries were unusually rich not only in heat-fermentable sugar, but also in colourants, flavor and tannins that ensure longevity. Only the acidity was missing, exceptionally low after record temperatures. So how are the resulting wines so fresh?

I asked this question of many manufacturers and most of them laughed with delight. Henri Lurton of Château Brane-Cantenac in Margaux, a relatively analytical winemaker, said: “I studied everything. Plant biology, soil condition, etc. And I have no idea!

Jacques Thienpont of Le Pin in Pomerol had an explanation at his relatively new St-Émilion Ch L’If property: the limestone under his vines adds zest to the wines. But only a part of his wine (and Bordeaux in general) is on limestone. He confessed that he has no way of explaining the liveliness of the 2022 Pin, which was grown on gravelly and sandy soils much less suited to drought.

Rémi Edange has been managing the Domaine de Chevalier estate for years. I heard him offer an explanation to some wine merchants as he poured a sample of his 2022 he at the presentation of Pessac-Léognan’s Union des Grands Crus (UGC). “Professor Émile Peynaud always told me not to worry about ripe musts because fermentation will create acidity,” he said, quoting the godfather of modern Bordeaux winemaking. “And that’s what happened in 2022. We have to be humble.”

Peynaud’s successors at the University of Bordeaux, currently Marchal et al, produce a detailed growing season report each year. In their report on the 2022 vintage, they highlight the effect of the long, hot, dry summer, which resulted in worryingly low acidity levels in the grapes at harvest. “However, as is often the case, it naturally increased during alcoholic fermentation to reach more standard values. The experience of the vintners in the previous hot years was therefore beneficial, discouraging them from acidifying the must, which would have irreparably upset the balance of flavors in red wines”.

Unlike some years, in 2022 their leaves have remained green and healthy, in some cases until November. As Fabien Teitgen, who has been at Ch Smith Haut Lafitte in Pessac-Léognan for 27 years, put it: “2022 has been hotter and drier than any other season since its inception. So the vine has become accustomed to the heat compared to, for example, 2003, when suddenly hot and dry weather arrived in the summer”. A devoted practitioner of organic and biodynamic precepts, he rejects the idea that the vine has its own intelligence,” but the vine has a better relationship with the soil now”.

It is true that Bordeaux’s viticultural landscape has changed completely in this century, moving from bare earth to a riot of Napa Valley-style cover crops designed to improve soil microbiology and vine health.

Teitgen is also in charge of his employers’ new Napa outpost, Cathiard Vineyard. Several prominent Bordeaux men have invested in Northern California and he is far from the only Bordeaux winemaker to have learned lessons from Napa to apply to Bordeaux’s increasingly hot summers. Teitgen is even thinking about changing the way Smith Haut Lafitte’s vines are trained to the heatwave-tolerant cross shape common in Napa.

Stéphane Bonnasse, technical director of Ch Canon in St-Émilion, cited limestone as a factor in the freshness of his wines. He also hypothesized that the vines had become accustomed to the heat thanks to the warm spring. “They didn’t suffer at all. The vines were green as a leek all season long.”

Some Bordeaux people have suggested that the relatively cool nights at the end of the season helped preserve some freshness, but probably equally important were the low pH levels in the grape juice. Low acidity is usually accompanied by high pH levels, but in 2022 the pH levels were unexpectedly low, which kept the musts microbiologically stable and full of health and vigor.

The wines are certainly impressive. After such a hot summer, there’s no escaping the high alcohol levels—typically over 14 percent—although some vines stopped ripening when conditions became too hot and dry for photosynthesis. But the lack of rain ward off the fungal diseases to which the vines are prone, so the grapes were healthy. The weather was so good in late August and September that estate managers could decide when to harvest each plot of each variety, rather than being rushed by the threat of rain.

Over the years, Bordeaux has oscillated between late-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon and fleshier, earlier-ripening Merlot grapes, with the latter recently falling out of favor. But it’s almost as if the Merlot vines knew it, as observers agreed that, in 2022, Merlot shone, not only in its traditional territory on the right bank of the Gironde estuary, but also on the left bank, where it is often been seen as an inferior blending ingredient to the dominant Cabernet Sauvignon.

The grapes were small but flowering was early and generous. This means that the harvest size, while below the 10-year average, was 9% higher than in the much cooler and wetter 2021 vintage. The fact that the wines are so impressive and relatively substantial (even those from well-drained soils that are expected to suffer the most in a drought year) will presumably encourage the owners in their usual habit of raising prices each year.

They will have been encouraged by the record number of en primeur visitors this year and by the fact that both American and Asian wine aficionados are back in force. The numbers of those who attended UGC tastings were even higher than in the spring of 2019, when the 2018 vintage was presented almost a year before the lockdown. Bordeaux lovers, get ready!

Tasting notes, scores and suggested drink dates on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. Some international wholesalers on Wine-searcher.com

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