Wine Spectator No.1 Wine of 2025

‘If you needed a reminder that Bordeaux still makes some of the greatest wines in the world…’

Since 1988, Wine Spectator magazine editors have selected what they judge to be the 100 most exciting wines of each year. The prestigious annual list honours successful wineries, regions and vintages around the world, and is judged on criteria of quality, value and excitement. The reveal for the number 1 spot for 2025 came on Friday, and it was from Bordeaux, and the stellar 2022 vintage: third growth Chateau Giscours.

2022 Giscours was 30 years in the making. Alexander van Beek arrived at the chateau in 1995, initially to work a harvest. But he stayed on, and has been playing a long game ever since, improving the vineyards and adding consistency to the wine. When he started, the vineyard was in a poor state, with 140,000 missing vines. Using a parcel of vines planted in 1923, and informed by an exhaustive terroir study, he began a selection massale, propagating new cuttings to replace them.

As the vineyard recovered, van Beek perceived that parcels of different ages were ripening at different rates. Previously, the whole estate had been harvested in a two-week sweep, but from 2018, van Beek had the vineyard team move to picking over a five-week period in successive passes. The qualitative uptick in the fruit was noticeable. Also in 2018, Thomas Duclos came on board as a consultant. He helped reinforce the estate’s move towards biodynamics (notably, introducing cover crop in the vineyards), and in the cellar he has focused on purity and finesse in extraction. /NT

Offered subject to remaining unsold. Wines available late Spring 2026. To place an order, click on the wines below or call 020 7638 5998