Vintage Guides

Bordeaux | Burgundy ... and more to follow!

Wine is different every year. That's part of its charm, and that's part of what compels us to taste, to explore, to investigate and collect. If (say) Grand-Puy-Lacoste was the same every year, nobody would think about building a vertical collection with cases of consecutive vintages. But your bottle of 2020 Grand-Puy-Lacoste will always be different from your bottle of 2021 Grand-Puy-Lacoste. Why? There's more than one reason - but one very big one is vintage. The weather in the growing season of the grapes that were used to make the wine has a fundamental effect in defining the character of the finished wine. For instance, overall rainfall in two given vintages may (or may not) be similar, but it will make a huge difference to the character of the final wine whether the bulk of that rain fell in May or September. Was it a hot year overall, or a cool one? If it was hot, did it get cooler at night, or stay warm? (When) was it wet, (when) was it dry? What was the weather like around the crucial periods of flowering and harvest? Were there destructive weather events like frost or hail? Outbreaks of mildew in the vineyard?

The answers to these questions give us our first key to understanding a wine in front of us. It's important to remember that this is a broad-brush tool, and individual circumstances will be different at every estate. Local conditions (a.k.a. microclimate) may be different to the generally prevailing conditions. And different estates will make very different decisions in response to vintage conditions. Did they, say, harvest before the rain, or did they hold off?

There are other reasons why your bottles of 2020 and 2021 Grand-Puy-Lacoste will be different. Apart from vineyard management, the winery may well have made different cellar choices in 2020 and 2021. (They probably did, in response to the different conditions of the fruit arriving at the winery). And of course, it is important to remember that your bottle of 2020 Grand-Puy-Lacoste is and always will be a year older than your bottle of 2021 Grand-Puy-Lacoste, and the wine inside will therefore always be at a different place on its evolutionary journey. 

But vintage remains one of your primary information tools in understanding the character of a wine in front of you. With that in mind, please find links above to our guide to the prevailing vintage conditions over recent years in the most-collected wine regions. We've started with Bordeaux and Burgundy - more regions to follow!