How did your new book, Complete Bordeaux Vintage Guide, come about?
On my wine-journal website, back around 2003, it was called Bordeaux Vintage Guide, and there was a very short paragraph on each growing season back to 1945. I could see that it was popular, but when I joined with [Robert] Parker I couldn’t see a place for it, but I kept it. Then towards the end of lockdown, I thought maybe I could do it as an article, then I started to expand the growing seasons, and like my Pomerol book, it wasn’t intended to be a book, but I think it’s always good to write a book that you couldn’t bear to see someone else write. That motivated me to spend long hours researching it, and when I decided to expand the non-vinous elements like the songs and films, that made it much bigger.
When I received the book, the first thing I did was check my own vintage
If you don’t know somebody’s age but want to find out discreetly, just hand them the book and just watch. I can’t think of one single person who hasn’t gone straight to their own vintage.
Well, my vintage is 1973 – not the finest Bordeaux has ever seen…
When you look at 1973, it was a pretty appalling growing season, but I remember having lunch and being served a wine blind, and it was gorgeous – it was Pétrus 1973. OK, it was Pétrus, but part of the problem is you read the growing season you might think all the wines are a write-off, but that is never the case. And we’ve just had a vintage like 2021 – look at the growing season, it was abysmal. But there are also some really lovely wines. I try not to grade vintages, because you’ll make assumptions.
How hard was it to research vintages older than 1945?
The further you go back, the harder it gets. But you’ve got things like André Simon’s fantastic book Vintage Wise, and you start stitching things together. And even though [the older vintages] are going to be much shorter, I still think they give you a gist of the vintage and what went on.
Why did you add a song, film and news story to each year?
In my writing, I try to take it outside of wine. That’s the problem with a lot of wine writing, it’s quite myopic and they forget that not everyone may not be interested in fermentation temperatures or the type of pruning system in the vineyard. You’ve got to attract people in to read about wine. If I took all those parts out, it would be quite a dull book, to be honest! The idea was to have that sense of time. And their one raison d’être is to make you think of that year. But when you think that Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time, which came out over 20 years ago, and Nirvana’s Nevermind over 30 years ago, it just makes you feel old, basically!
What was your first experience of Bordeaux?
I wasn’t a wine drinker before my first job in wine, which was in 1996. My first trip to Bordeaux was 1997, working with a buying team in Japan. Because the company was buying a lot of top-end Bordeaux, I think my first-ever visit was to Château Latour! In a way that was good because I was always quite objective about it. I don’t get starry-eyed about visiting a First Growth because it was just part of the job. But I tasted a Montrose 1982, and I understood why people get fascinated about wine, then I caught the bug as well.
What was the first Bordeaux wine you tasted?
I’m not sure, but somewhere I’ve still got the first tasting note I wrote for a Bordeaux wine, when I was doing a WSET course in Battersea, south London. It was Château Lyonnat 1990.
What reputation do you think Bordeaux has?
It’s a sort of love-hate relationship. I think without question, the quality of wines has never been better. Perhaps they’ve got too alcoholic for some because of the growing seasons they’ve been having, but when you taste the quality of wines, not just at the top, there are many that are absolute bargains. Bordeaux is one of the best value-for-money regions in the world.
Wines from Bordeaux
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Château Dutruch Grand Poujeaux, Moulis-en-Médoc 2017
The Society's Claret 2022 Bag-in-Box (2.25 litre)
La Chenade, Lalande de Pomerol 2021
The Society's Exhibition Pauillac 2019
Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, Saint-Julien 2014
Château Bel Air Perponcher Réserve, Bordeaux Blanc 2024
Château Ordonnat, Graves 2022
Château Mont-Pérat Blanc, Bordeaux 2020
Château Latour-Martillac, Pessac-Léognan 2015
Château Bélair Monange, Saint-Emilion 2018
How do you see the long-term future of Bordeaux?
It is going to shrink. The only thing that could stop that was if the whole world started drinking Bordeaux like it did 40 or 50 years ago, when there weren’t so many countries producing very good wines, but that just isn’t the case now. It’s very competitive. Bordeaux may have to diversify – look at Sauternes, they’re now taking dry Sauternes very seriously. One of the great things about Bordeaux is that you have this sense of time. If you want to taste a 1973, you can pick up the phone and find a bottle pretty easily. There are very few regions where you can do that; you can do it with Burgundy but it’s very hit and miss.
What’s been the biggest change over the 150 years you cover in the book?
Alcohol levels are higher now than they used to be. That said, when it was a warm vintage [in the past] you still had pretty high levels because you didn’t have the means to control the fermentation like you do now. There was a lot more volatility in wines because they had very rudimentary wineries. But I’d like to think that the wines were fundamentally the same – they’re from the same vineyard, the same grape varieties. But fundamentally, the DNA of a particular château is a common thread. The vintages can change, the winemakers can change and the techniques can change, but if you allow wines to age, then the thumbprint of the château comes through.
Did you pick up any patterns of vintage variation?
One thing that changed my mind a bit was always when you speak to winemakers, they say ‘We’ve never seen temperatures like this’ or ‘We’ve never had a drought like this’. Naturally, we talk about our own lifetimes. But when you go before that, you see vintages from the 19th century that are quite similar to the present day, with the same temperatures. A couple of times I’ve read out the growing season to somebody and said: ‘What year do you think that is?’, and they say ‘2018’, and I tell them, ‘No, 1890-something!’. And back in the 19th century, you didn’t have the technology or the money to do much about it. Perhaps the biggest thing that has changed is that winemakers used to look at a decade and think they would get two or three good vintages and the rest they would have to sell their wines off cheaply. Even when I started in the 1990s, that was how people looked at it, because there wasn’t much you could do. It was almost like Port, declaring a vintage! But nowadays, you have the money and technology at the top end to make something not just drinkable but pretty good. Maybe we’ve lost something from that.
How would you persuade some of our members to start buying En Primeur?
It’s just a case of finding what you like and which châteaux suit your palate. Choose, say, six or seven châteaux that appeal to you. Not just the wines but the story behind the château, or the owner – wine should be more than what’s in the glass. Take six or seven châteaux and say ‘Right, I’m going to follow these guys.’ I think it’s interesting to see how the wines differ each year. That’s preferable to changing every single year so you’re never quite sure what to buy.
What is en primeur and how does it work?
And if you’re completely new to Bordeaux, where should you start?
I would say subscribe to Vinous, because there’s lots of information there! But I think you do have to learn a bit about it, learn the basics and keep within your means. Why not start with a nice Cru Bourgeois from 2016 and see how you go with that, then work up. And then if you want to splash out a bit more, why not? And stick to what you like to taste, not a mate telling you have to buy something because it’s hip and trendy.
How do you get younger drinkers into Bordeaux, particularly those who were raised on southern hemisphere wines?
It’s a big challenge, but I do think people make a mistake in thinking that all young people used to drink Bordeaux, but now they’re not and what can we do about it? That’s rubbish! When you’re young, the last thing you do is drink wine; that’s what you do when you’re older. I think people forget that. I used to say that jazz, golf and wine are the three things you do when you’re older, when you’ve got a bit of money! How are we going to get Generation Z or whatever to drink wine? Well, it will come. It’s something you grow into almost.
But there are so many countries now producing really good wine – that is the real challenge for Bordeaux. And the problem Bordeaux has is that its image is a bit stuffy, with winemakers in nice tweed suits – compare that to South Africa, another country I cover, where you’ve got these cool dudes going out on surfboards and coming back and making amazing wines. Which one is going to appeal to younger people? That’s a very tough thing that Bordeaux has to face.
Eventually, I think people grow into drinking wine, but I do think price is a big factor. People forget how much money people are willing to spend on a bottle. If you want to charge £40-£50 a bottle, your market is so, so niche, and again still very competitive that you lose your audience.
What’s your favourite or most memorable Bordeaux vintage you’ve tried?
When I started in wine, I had no money. I used to dream that one day I would taste a 1982. In the beginning, I felt like I had to taste the 1982s because that was a benchmark – how would I know about Bordeaux without tasting them? That was my first goal. But as a vintage, I’m lucky enough to have tasted quite a few 1945s, and as clichéd as it is, there is something magical about that vintage. I was at a friend’s house and we had around 20 1945s – it was absolutely crazy – and they were amazing. But not every 1945 is amazing, and nor should it be, as a lot of châteaux were almost ruined by the war.
The big question: Left Bank or Right Bank?
I can't choose! I will say I have a soft spot for Pomerol, but it’s the same when people say, ‘Bordeaux or Burgundy?’. But when doing the book, I had to decide whether to include Soul II Soul’s Back to Life or The Stone Roses’ Fools Gold – maybe with a second edition I’ll change it. I would love to tweak the book a little bit each time.
Would you go even further back than 1870 if possible?
I went back to 1870 because that’s the oldest vintage where I’ve had four or five wines. I have had older wines, but they were one-offs. The oldest I’ve had was 1831. You could go back to 1855 – that would be logical – but by going back to 1870 it made it 150 years (although technically it’s 151), with 1945 right in the middle, which seemed nice.
And finally, what’s next on your list?
I’d love to redo my Pomerol book, because that’s over 10 years old now. For me, nothing gives you the satisfaction of doing a book. You really have to push yourself; it’s like running a marathon! And I do hope the book will get people interested in wine. One of the nice things about it is that people I’ve shown the book to who are not interested in wine at all are very interested in reading it.
