Bordeaux’s 2022 vintage: a delightful mystery

“Vines, speak to us, please!” might be the clarion call of the Bordeaux wine establishment at the moment.

I’m just back from a brief immersion in this year’s en primeur campaign, during which samples of the latest vintage were shown to thousands of traders from around the world and scores of commentators. The most common word to describe these embryonic 2022s? “Surprising.” Just what was going on in the millions of Merlot and Cabernet vines growing in the Gironde department?

Last summer was scorching in France, especially the south-west, with temperatures way above average throughout the growing season. Wildfires broke out in the Bordeaux region. Even more testing for vignerons, there was no rain from the beginning of July until late August, and rainfall totals were seriously below average every month except June. One would expect the wines that resulted from these sub-Saharan conditions to taste soupy and as broiled as an Arcachon surfer.

The dry season translated into small grapes with thick skins. This meant that the berries were unusually high not just in fermentable sugar from the heat but also in colouring matter, flavour and the tannins that ensure longevity. All that was missing was acidity, which was exceptionally low after record high temperatures. So how are the resulting wines so fresh?

I put this question to many producers and most of them laughed delightedly. Henri Lurton of Château Brane-Cantenac in Margaux, a relatively analytical winemaker, said: “I’ve studied everything. The plant biology, the condition of the soil et cetera. And I have no idea!”

Jacques Thienpont of Le Pin in Pomerol had an explanation in his relatively new St-Émilion property Ch L’If: the limestone under its vines adds zest to the wines. But only a portion of his wine (and of Bordeaux wine in general) is on limestone. He confessed he had no way of explaining the vibrancy of the 2022 Pin, which was grown on much less drought-friendly deep gravel and sandy soils.

Rémi Edange has been managing the Domaine de Chevalier estate for years. I heard him offering an explanation to some wine merchants as he poured a sample of his 2022 at the Union des Grands Crus (UGC) presentation of Pessac-Léognan. “Professor Émile Peynaud always told me not to worry about ripe musts because the fermentation will create acidity,” he said, citing Bordeaux’s godfather of modern winemaking. “And that’s what happened in 2022. We have to be humble.”

Peynaud’s successors at the University of Bordeaux, currently Marchal et al, produce a detailed report on the growing season every year. In their 2022 vintage report, they underline the effect of the long, hot, dry summer, which led to a worryingly low acidity level in the grapes at harvest. “However, as is often the case, it naturally increased during alcoholic fermentation to reach more standard values. Winemakers’ experience of previous hot vintages was, therefore, beneficial, discouraging them from acidifying the must, which would have irrevocably upset the balance of flavours in the red wines.”

Unlike some years, in 2022 their leaves stayed green and healthy, up to November in some cases. As Fabien Teitgen, who has been at Ch Smith Haut Lafitte in Pessac-Léognan for 27 years, put it: “2022 was hotter and drier than any other season right from the start. So the vine got used to the heat compared to, say, 2003 when hot, dry weather suddenly arrived in summer.” A devout practitioner of organic and biodynamic precepts, he rejects the notion that the vines have their own intelligence, “but vines have a better relationship with the soil now”.

It’s true that Bordeaux’s viticultural landscape has changed completely this century, having gone from bare earth to a riot of cover crops, Napa Valley style, designed to improve the microbiology of the soil and the health of the vines.

Teitgen is also responsible for the new Napa outpost of his employers, Cathiard Vineyard. Several notable Bordelais have been investing in northern California and he is far from the only Bordeaux winemaker to be learning lessons from Napa to apply to Bordeaux’s increasingly hot summers. Teitgen is even thinking of changing the way Smith Haut Lafitte’s vines are trained to the heatwave-hardy cross shape common in Napa.

Stéphane Bonnasse, technical director of Ch Canon in St-Émilion, cited limestone as a factor in the freshness of his wines. He also hypothesised that the vines got used to the heat thanks to the warm spring. “They didn’t suffer at all. The vines were as green as a leek throughout the season.”

Some Bordelais suggested that relatively cool nights at the end of the season helped preserve some freshness, but probably just as important were the low pH levels in the grape juice. Usually low acidity is accompanied by high pH levels but in 2022 pH levels were unexpectedly low, which kept the musts microbiologically stable and rude with health and vigour.

Join Jancis

Join Jancis Robinson for a tasting of remarkable Portuguese wines at the FTWeekend Festival US Edition, in Washington, DC, on May 20. Register now at ft.com/festival-us.

The wines are certainly impressive. After such a hot summer, there is no escaping the high alcohol levels — typically more than 14 per cent — even if some vines stopped ripening when conditions became just too hot and dry for photosynthesis. But the lack of rain staved off the fungal diseases to which vines are prone, so the grapes were healthy. The weather was so fine in late August and September that estate managers could decide when to pick each plot of each variety, rather than being rushed by the threat of rain.

Over the years, the Bordelais have swung between favouring late-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon and the fleshier, earlier-ripening Merlot grapes, with the latter falling out of favour recently. But it’s almost as though Merlot vines knew this as observers agreed that, in 2022, Merlot shone, not just in its traditional territory on the right bank of the Gironde estuary but on the left bank too, where it has often been seen as an inferior blending ingredient for the dominant Cabernet Sauvignon.

The berries were small but flowering was early and generous. This meant that the size of the crop, although lower than the 10-year average, was 9 per cent larger than in the much cooler, wetter 2021 vintage. The fact that the wines are so impressive and relatively consistent (even those from well drained soils that would be expected to suffer most in a drought year) will presumably encourage proprietors in their usual habit of increasing prices every year.

They will have been encouraged by the record number of en primeur visitors this year and the fact that both American and Asian wine enthusiasts were back in force. Numbers of those who attended UGC tastings were even higher than in spring 2019, when the 2018 vintage was presented almost a year before lockdowns. Bordeaux lovers, brace yourselves!

Tasting notes, scores and suggested drink dates on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. Some international stockists on Wine-searcher.com

Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first