What will it take to be bottoms up for Bordeaux?

I wonder how many bottles of red bordeaux will grace Christmas dinner tables this weekend? I generally recommend a softer style of wine, one based on Pinot Noir perhaps, to go with turkey and its sweetish accompaniments.

The chewier, drier style of red bordeaux, however, can go well with something more savoury such as roast beef or goose.

But what is happening to red bordeaux? Most agree that its quality has never been better. At the top end of Bordeaux’s carefully carved hierarchy, the so-called classed growths, château owners have made so much money that they can afford to invest in every last fine-tuning operation, such as an optical sorter that rejects grapes with the slightest imperfection. Others blend only the very best vats into the main wine — the grand vin — each year.

At the bottom end, the warming climate means that even if the property is located in one of Bordeaux’s less propitious areas, the grapes still ripen fully, making lean, mean wines a thing of the past.

But as in so many societies today, the gap between top and bottom has been widening. This has been so disastrous for those producing wine at the bottom end that they are calling on the French government to pay them to uproot up to 15,000 hectares of the least profitable of Bordeaux’s 110,000ha of vines.

It’s not just that the price of Bordeaux’s most basic wine has been falling; so have land prices. A hectare of vineyard with a famous name attached, such as Pauillac, has shot up to €2.8mn, according to the (generally conservative) estimates of France’s agricultural land agent Safer. A few kilometres away in the much less glamorous appellation of Médoc, the price of a hectare has actually fallen to just €40,000.

Robert Joseph, a British wine trade commentator, has argued that the blame for this lies with the producers at the bottom end who have failed to build brands, unlike their counterparts with names as famous as Lafite, Mouton, Lynch-Bages and Montrose.

In a feisty article in the trade publication Meininger’s Wine Business International, he calls out the malcontents at the bottom of the ladder: “The people they should be angry with are themselves and the négociants [merchants], for failing to show the skill their Champagne counterparts have in creating the brand value their wines deserve,” he writes. “If Bordeaux had a few big brands doing the job Moët & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot et al have done for their region, Bordeaux as a whole would be in a far better state financially than it is today.”

Global wine marketplace Liv-ex compiles an annual list of the most powerful brands in fine wine with the trade publication The Drinks Business. This year, for the first time, there are no Bordeaux wines in the top 10, and the number in the top 100 has fallen from 53 in 2017 to 25 in 2022. (Burgundy has been the big beneficiary, climbing from 24 to 39 over the same period.)

Bud Cuchet co-founded the London fine wine traders Fine + Rare. He couldn’t but notice the falling interest his customers had in Bordeaux and the contrast between producers in, say, California, where direct relationships with consumers are so important. Bordeaux producers, meanwhile, have basically only one customer, the Bordeaux Place, a tight-knit network of wholesale merchants who do all the selling for them.

So when he left Fine + Rare in 2017, he set up a company designed to create personal links between Bordeaux château owners and influencers, consumers and restaurant buyers. He went to Bordeaux to present the results of his initial research, which showed how poorly Bordeaux is represented on important British restaurant wine lists, but such was the indifference of the Bordelais that he gave up.

The Bordeaux classed growths came to London en masse in November to present their 2020s now that they are in bottle. Most of them are very well made, even if more expensive than the bargain 2019 vintage offered en primeur during lockdown. Earlier this month in London I bumped into Olivier Bernard of Domaine de Chevalier, one of the stars of this 2020 tasting. “It’s vital that you write about the 2020s now that they are ready to deliver,” he urged, eyes ablaze.

I must say my inbox has never before been so overwhelmed by Bordeaux producers anxious to have me taste their 2020s. I may be accused of “Bordeaux bashing”, but I get the sense that the 2020 vintage, the most recent to go into bottle as opposed to being offered en primeur before that stage, is proving more difficult than usual to sell.

Twice recently in London I’ve had the welcome chance to compare top red Bordeaux blind with its counterparts — Cabernets, often blended with other Bordeaux grapes — from elsewhere and it has been instructive. The first comparative tasting was organised by the Napa Valley Vintners. It comprised 17 wines, mainly mature Napa Cabs from vintages 2005 to 2010, but the organisers threw in three lauded red bordeaux — Chx Calon Ségur 2006, Léoville Barton 2008 and Pichon Lalande 2010 — as well as top wines from Tuscany and Chile. I enjoyed the Bordeaux trio but my favourite wines were Long Meadow Ranch 2009 Napa and Ornellaia 2006 Bolgheri.

The second Bordeaux blend tasting was an abbreviated London version of a big annual blind tasting of top Cabernet blends from around the world held at the Margaret River winery Cape Mentelle.

The wines were of a consistently high standard and this time my favourite wines were the two Napa wines, Spottswoode 2017 and Château Montelena, The Montelena 2017 together with Ch Pichon Lalande 2017. We were urged by the hosts not to try to identify the wines — “just enjoy them in this celebration of Cabernet” — but of course it was difficult to resist the urge. (And, whereas the Napa blind tasting in London took place in the early evening and I had already participated in two big tastings that day, the Cape Mentelle event was first thing in the morning when our senses are meant to be at their keenest.)

I was pretty accurate in my guesses but took the gorgeous Spottswoode from California, renowned for its subtlety, for “a glamorous bordeaux?” and thought the Pichon Lalande could have been the Léoville Barton. But an examination of retail prices of all these wines makes Bordeaux classed growths look quite good value relative to their most successful challengers. Bordeaux may not be fashionable, but it should be of serious interest to bargain hunters.

More stockists from Wine-searcher.com. Tasting notes on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com

Follow Jancis on Twitter @JancisRobinson

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