Bordeaux’s 2020 vintage has produced brilliant wines that exemplify the region’s rapid agronomic and technical evolution, trends I detailed at length in a recent essay. The so-called trilogy of dry, sunny vintages that 2020 concludes may be summarized very simply: in 2018, the rain never came; in 2019, it arrived late, after the Merlot harvest; and in 2020, it arrived earlier, in mid-August. The 2018s are rich, muscular and often jammy; the 2019s are more vibrant, refined and differentiated by style and site while remaining fleshy and sensual; and the 2020s, at their best, are the most classic of the trio, with even purer terroir expression and lower alcohols, even if they are not as uniformly charming and accessible as the 2019s.
The 2020 vintage, however, was a high-wire act. Extreme conditions favored the most intelligently farmed vineyards whose soils and canopy management were adapted to mitigate hydric stress. Warm weather in September and an early harvest meant that picking dates were even more than usually critical to avoiding overripe flavors and a loss of precision. And inherently firm tannins, the legacy of drought from mid-June to mid-August, meant that gentle extraction was essential to avoid producing compact, chunky, astringent wines. Then, in the cellar, high pHs (especially in the Médoc) meant that vigilance was necessary to avoid microbial spoilage during élevage. Ripe fruit also requires less oxidative handling to preserve its vibrancy. Producers who met all these tests have produced great wines that exemplify the New Bordeaux.
What, in detail, were the conditions with which Bordeaux had to contend? A rainy winter segued into a warm spring, accompanied by mildew pressure that was less severe—and which found producers generally better prepared—than the mildew outbreak that wrought such havoc in 2018. Flowering was early, taking place in May; and from mid-June, rainfall stopped, leading to drought conditions exacerbated by July and August heat waves. Mid-August thunderstorms broke the drought and helped save yields, with Merlot berries benefiting in particular. Picking began, and the heat returned in mid-September, with showers toward the end of the month and then torrential rain in October that brought the red wine vintage to a definitive conclusion.
All of this unfolded, of course, in the context of complicating COVID-19 restrictions, including a stringent spring lockdown. In every instance, timing was critical, whether of viticultural interventions to combat mildew and manage cover crops and canopies in response to the heat or of picking dates and when to extract during vinification. Yet the best producers overcame all of these challenges to craft wines of striking energy and character. While the vagaries of terroir and precipitation certainly also influenced outcomes—and indeed, 2020 is at more than a few estates the most terroir-transparent vintage of the 2018-2019-2020 trilogy—this was above all a vintage where hard work in the vineyards and competence in the winery were critical. By contrast, producers who simply attempted to apply old recipes and formulas enjoyed less success. In this respect, too, 2020 exemplifies the New Bordeaux.
Consumers trying to understand these wines may, however, find themselves perplexed. Several readers who had followed the news about Bordeaux’s heat waves in 2020 have asked me if the wines resemble the 2003s. The reasons why they don’t are set out at length in my article on Bordeaux’s state of the art. On the contrary, the 2020 vintage, much like 2022, gives me great grounds for optimism, strengthening my conviction that progressive farming combined with more precise winemaking and less oxidative élevage can continue to deliver wines of freshness, harmony and place, even in today’s drier, warmer growing seasons.
Others may observe that the broad critical consensus about which wines were more successful than others that has persisted for the last decade has well and truly broken down. In my view, many critics tasted the 2020s too soon after bottling, the shock of which accentuated the vintage’s tannic profile. The style of the vintage also exposes how greatly tolerance for over-ripeness, over-extraction and clumsy cooperage choices varies between professional critics. Whether this reflects genuine indifference, or if it derives merely from a desire to avoid unpleasant interviews with petulant proprietors, I cannot say. But I hope at least that the accompanying reviews reflect a clearly articulated vision of contemporary Bordeaux, and that even readers who disagree with a given score will be able to understand the reasoning behind it.
