I’ve decided that if the Bordeaux 2022 Primeurs campaign were a play by Shakespeare, it would be Hamlet. A lot of Château owners would love me to say it’s because Hamlet was Shakespeare’s best work EVER. And yes, it was Shakespeare’s best writing, but that’s not it. First, it’s because the play opens with the ghost of the former king beseeching his son, Hamlet, to avenge his death. See, that’s the spirit of the last greatest vintage ever (er, 2021, wasn’t it?) wanting 2022 to avenge its early demise. Then there’s a lot of family politics, deceit, storytelling, a play-within-a-play, feigned madness, real madness, and finally, an adversarial duel that does not end well for either party. (This all happens in Hamlet too.) I have ideas about the final duel involving a fellow wine critic and a famous Bordeaux wine consultant. Long story short—if hubris and short-sightedness prevail over common sense when it comes to the 2022 release prices, leading players and middlemen could well be headed for a Hamlet-like ending to the campaign. (Spoiler alert, it’s a tragedy.)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The 2022 wines are a happy ending to a nail-biting growing season that was not without its dramas. The remarkable consistency of quality is just one surprise to come out of this vintage of extremes. The other is the styles. There is a luminosity to many of the wines from 2022 that defies what we thought we knew about Bordeaux varieties grown in hot climates. It whispers previously untold truths about the potential of the region’s terroirs and vines in the face of our changing world.

The undeniable brightness of the 2022s reminds us that it is arrogant to think we understand all the mysteries that occur between budburst and bottling line.

So, if the 2022 Growing Season were one of Shakespeare’s plays, I’ve concluded it would be Measure for Measure. Purposely ambiguous as to whether it’s a comedy or a tragedy, one of the play’s central themes is the dichotomy between purity and corruption—a recurring debate in modern-day winemaking. The title, believed to allude to a biblical line, is about retributive balance, which is a nice segue into a brief discussion of climate change.

An Inconvenient Wine Truth

Our climate is changing. We don’t want to hear this, least of all because we love classic Bordeaux wine, and we don’t want it to change. But wine is inextricably linked to climate; therefore, it is changing too. As growing season weather is increasingly hit by unpredictable periods of extremes—frost, hail, rain, drought, and heat—winemakers battle to moderate the impact of these extremes to maintain a “sense of place” in the wines. But a place is not just the land. It is also the climate. We can hope and wish to return to the styles forged fifty years ago. Still, without spadefuls of manipulation, the style of Bordeaux must change with the climate or deny its purpose to communicate the purest, most honest account of time and place. 

Some vintages, such as 2021, will continue to struggle to produce high-quality, age-worthy wines. And yet, cold, wet, dreary vintages like these can make us sigh, wistful for the good old days when this type of growing season was more common than not. All the while, we marvel at what is possible now thanks to modern viticulture and winemaking. Then the climate snaps back with a record-breaking vintage like 2022—a sustained period of heat, drought, and sunlight that surpasses anything in recorded history. We think the vines will stumble or even perish under the stress. We imagine harvest bins full of raisins and predict the wines with be undrinkable underripe/overripe monsters. 

Twist ending: The top wines of the 2022 Bordeaux vintage are bright, multilayered, and luminous. And there are a lot of them. This a classic, great Bordeaux vintage. 

How?

The 2022 Growing Season

I won’t go into too much detail recounting all the well-known facts about the vintage, which have been repeated over and over. So, here’s just a brief replay:

After this, there were two more significant heat events to come, but I’ll pause here for a brief discussion of how the heat spikes were mitigated to the greatest effect.

Winemakers have learned since 2003 not to de-leaf too strictly, too early. Furthermore, the spring had been drier than average, so the canopies were naturally smaller, requiring less water and less of the vine’s energy to maintain. As June came in hot, many growers were super-careful with de-leafing and not trimming the laterals, preserving the vine’s own canopy to help shade bunches if needed (and it was). Clever management of cover crops was used to help protect precious little moisture in the soils. Biodynamic producers such as Pontet-Canet and Smith Haut Lafitte sprayed chamomile infusions on leaves to help cool the vines and offer respite. Meanwhile, La Conseillante, Les Carmes Haut-Brion, and Pontet-Canet reported spraying a “sunscreen” made from a naturally existing clay or talc on the leaves and berries at key intervals during the hottest periods.

Earliest Harvest EVER

During my Primeurs visits, the line “earliest harvest ever” was like a broken record.

I spent two weeks in Bordeaux in mid-September to observe the harvest. The Merlots had mostly all come in on both banks, and everyone was waiting for the Cabernets. For many, it was a prolonged, drawn-out harvest that required careful strategy.

“We had 11 mm of rain in August, which wasn’t much, but it helped the vines a lot,” Mathieu Bessonnet, winemaker at Pontet-Canet in Pauillac, told me. “A couple of blocks struggled, so we dropped about 50% of their fruit in early September. We sent our team out to drop all the fruit that was shriveling and kept only the good fruit for three more weeks. We know the vineyard much better now, so we know to wait for certain parcels. The average age of our vines is around 55 years now on the 81-hectare vineyard, making us around the oldest in the region for a vineyard of this size. Our old vines seem to buffer these extreme conditions. But it was a long harvest.”

“The vintage was hardest for the Cabernet Sauvignon on the deep gravel,” said Eric Kohler from Château Lafite. “We had to make a first harvest of the dehydrated berries and those of struggling vines, which was about 10% of the total production of Lafite. This did not go into the grand vin. We also did this in 2016. We can call this the suffering selection. When we did this in 2016, the wine was undrinkable. This year, it was actually pretty good. We used a little in the Carruades. This is what we picked at the end of August. Then we picked young vines on the 1st and 2nd of September. The great Merlot we began to pick on the 5th of September. We began the Cabernet Sauvignon for Lafite on the 13th of September and finished on the 23rd of September.”

Dropping compromised/shriveled fruit in the run-up to harvest was a tactic used by quite a few wineries, which seemed to pay off. Much of the Cabernet I saw hanging in mid-September was in excellent condition, although I could see a lot of dropped fruit between rows. Berries were itty-bitty, most winemakers reporting the Cabernet Sauvignon to be around 0.75 to 0.8 of a gram, and Merlot on the right bank was around 1 gram or slightly more per berry.

“We started harvest on the 8th of September, but we are taking our time,” said Pichon-Baron’s winemaker, Pierre Montégut, in mid-September. “It is just the beginning of the fermentation of the best parts of Merlot. We taste every Cabernet Sauvignon plot every week. We will try to wait as long as possible. Maybe we can have some rain this weekend?”

Everyone in the Médoc prayed for a little September rain for the Cabernet Sauvignon. It was just wishful thinking. 

Meanwhile, over on the right bank, in some places, the harvest had already begun for the Merlots before the end of August.

When I arrived at Château Canon on the 19th of September, all the Merlot had been in vats for at least a week, and the Cabernet Franc harvest was well underway. Harvest had started on the 30th of August (yep, earliest vintage EVER). I tasted the fermenting Merlot, which was as bright and fresh as the final blend I tasted a couple of weeks ago (on four separate occasions).

“We started harvesting on the 29th of August,” said Aymeric de Gironde of Troplong Mondot. “We now have a giant cold room so that we can keep the fruit in there for a day. It was a savior because, on the 29th of August, it was 31 degrees Celsius. Then we moved to a cold maceration for 10 to 14 days. We didn’t pump over every day. After fermentation was finished, we did this every other day. We had to be extremely careful. We lowered the use of new oak from 60% to 55% with more foudres this year.”

But not everyone was so quick to pull the trigger on harvest. “We made a very drastic selection on the crest,” said Joséphine Duffau-Lagarrosse from Beauséjour Duffau-Lagarrosse. “Then we waited. And waited into mid-September. Everyone else was picking all around us on the plateau. What some people forget is that you have to pick ripe. Not over-ripe, but not under-ripe either. I think strategy is very important. The most important tool is your mouth. We ate lots of fruit! When we found some vines to be ripe, we picked, and then we continued to wait for the rest.”

Tertre Roteboeuf waited even longer, not harvesting until the 1st of October. “Fruit that’s dynamic never loses its freshness,” said Francois Mitjavile’s son, Louis. “We saw that the leaves were still green, and the vine wasn’t suffering. We did analysis and thought that we could continue to wait a little more because the fruit was still dynamic. Some think we harvested late, but for us, this was early. Our fruit is ripe, and the tannins are more aromatic and smoother.”

I mention these producers because they all went on to produce spectacular wines, meaning there was no one ideal harvest date. It varied enormously from site to site. The story’s moral is that looking at harvest dates in isolation is misleading, particularly in 2022. Whether or not there was any advantage to leaving bunches to hang longer depended on 1) whether the berries had achieved phenolic and flavor ripeness and 2) if the vine had anything left to give. Come mid-September, there were a lot of vines around Bordeaux that were simply finished for the season and had no wherewithal to continue the ripening process. Others remained vibrant green and energetic and continued ripening right until the end.

Sorting, Gentle Extraction, Acid Sleight of Hand, & Other Pressing Matters

Elevage & Stability

Just a small mention about the future rearing of the 2022 Bordeaux wines in barrel: a number of winemakers were non-committal about anticipated time in barrel, and I believe this was a good thing. Generally, pHs are high this year. This puts the wines at increased microbial risk. Many of the barrel samples I tasted fell over after only a day; most were obviously volatile. This was not the case with the 2019 barrel samples, which were amazingly stable and generally had naturally lower pHs.   

“Our volatile acidity level after fermentation was three times what it normally is, which is always very low, and still is, but it is worth noting,” a top winemaker told me confidentially. “Winemakers will need to be very careful this vintage about brett and VA during the elevage.”

Consistency of Quality & Styles

Given the extreme growing season temperatures and dryness and the potential to make under-ripe/over-ripe monsters, the temptation to fearmonger about inconsistent quality in 2022 is out there. But I was surprised by how consistent I found the wines to be from top to bottom. There are a lot of expressive, downright delicious wines, many of which promise great aging potential—even at the value end. Cooler areas usually considered marginal such as the very north of the Médoc, Listrac-Moulis, and Entre-Deux-Mers, performed exceptionally well this year and without throwing a lot of mitigating resources (that they often don’t have) at the vineyards. Meanwhile, the hotter, more free-draining top terroirs did have the resources to counter the challenges and did so very well.

The major challenge is conveying the range of styles coming out of this vintage and matching those styles to meet consumers’ expectations of “great wine.”

While quality is generally consistent across much of Bordeaux in 2022, a critical factor for consumer decision-making is that styles are all over the show this year. The wide variety of paths—naturally caused (frost, hail, terroir responses, vine age) and man-made (managing the heat, drought, harvest decisions, and winemaking choices)—has resulted in one of the most heterogeneous vintages in terms of style that I’ve tasted.

However, here are a few generalizations to help guide readers:

• Alcohols are high on the right bank and in Pessac-Léognan (14-15%+), yet only slightly higher than average in the Médoc (13-14%).
• Bodies tend to be hedonically medium to full or full-bodied on the right bank and Pessac-Léognan and more classically medium-bodied in the Médoc.
• Tannin levels are high throughout Bordeaux but can seem a little chewy because of the increased use of press wine in a lot of wines, which often contain some seed tannins.
• The wines have hardly any dried berries, raisiny, or prune-like characters, regardless of commune or grape. If there are, I have noted them in my reviews. This lack of shriveled fruit is a remarkable feature of the vintage, considering the heat and drought conditions.
• Many of the wines have an impressive amount of red berry and floral nuances, which lend brightness and lift even if the acidity is relatively low, and the pH is rather high.

This last point is one of the signatures of 2022 and what I consider a “classic” signature of Bordeaux, which is a paradox in such an extreme vintage. There has been much discussion among winemakers and experts about the reasons why, but there are two explanations that seem most plausible to be:

1) The tiny, thick-skinned berries provided a solid shield to protect the juice during berry development and prevent it from oxidizing. This theory was thanks to a comment from Pierre-Olivier Clouet at Cheval Blanc. “The berries were very small, and the skins were thick, so there was no possibility for the juice to be oxidized. Black fruit characters in wines are just red fruits oxidized, and yet we still have some red fruits in our wine.”

2) There was some vine blockage, which is not always bad. “We think that we had some blockage in August—we believe this is why we have slightly lower alcohols than expected,” said Dominique Arangoïts from Cos d’Estournel. “This also happened in 2016 and 2003.” Apart from curtailing the alcohol, the other phenomena I’ve found to come out of slight but not extreme blockage (e.g., a slowing down of the vines rather than a full-stop) is the preservation of some fresher red berry and floral components in some berries, usually as a consequence of a slow or uneven véraison.

How will the 2022s age?

Whenever wines look downright delicious when they are young, the question pops up about how they will age. Can wine be good young and also age? If we consider 1982 and 2009, well, yes. 

Plenty of tannins provide the backbone of this vintage, and there is generous fruit to back it up, but there is a question over the high pHs/low acidities. While these are important factors, low acidity/high pH does not mean a wine cannot age. 1989 Haut-Brion has a pH of 4, which is higher than most 2022s! In fact, Haut-Brion has a relatively high pH most years, yet it ages incredibly well. No one component affects aging potential, but a complex combination. The very best 2022s should cellar for 40 to 50 years or more.

Sauternes & Dry Whites

The first releases from Sauternes have not been included here as they will be in a dedicated report, which merits its own in-depth analysis. Meanwhile, I can say that although this nail-biting vintage was even more challenging for the Sauternais, there are many good, sweet wines and a few extraordinary achievements from that neck of the woods. As for dry whites, a knee-jerk reaction to write them all off as uninspiring because it was such a hot vintage would be foolish. There are some true bright sparks from some of the coolest sites that are well worth seeking out.

This Report & the Tastings

This report is based on the two weeks I spent in Bordeaux in September 2022 observing the harvest and three weeks in April and May this year tasting over 1000 different wines and conducting more than 100 interviews. I tasted wines directly at over 100 châteaux. I conducted twelve large-scale tastings with organizations, consultants, and merchants, usually consisting of 100-250 wines each. Yes, it is exhausting to taste so many wines so many times, but it is the only way to get accurate results. Almost all the barrel samples I tasted were tasted at least twice, and some were tasted 4-5 times. I did not review if a sample was clearly tired and/or volatile. The nature of tasting barrel samples is that the wines are fragile, and judging an oxidized barrel sample is unfair.