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Bordeaux 2024: Full vintage review and top-scoring wines

Bordeaux editor Georgie Hindle breaks down the 2024 vintage in detail, with a review of the best wines and what it took to salvage something from one of the trickiest growing seasons of the last decade.

Bordeaux 2024 vintage

Vintage rating overall: 3/5


A ‘war’ is how Château Cheval Blanc’s Pierre-Olivier Clouet described the 2024 vintage.

It was perhaps never going to be easy when the growing season started as the wettest in recent memory, and the years ending in ‘4’ don’t have the best reputation – if you follow those rules in Bordeaux.

It’s an uneven vintage with highs and lows but it’s certainly not a disaster.

Better than expected doesn’t exactly heap praise on the 2024s but it could have been much worse, and no doubt would have been 20 years ago.

Mildew hit historically early with Lafleur beginning to spray on the 20 March and the pressure never let up from there with 31 treatments needed at some organic estates when a little more than half an inch of rain would wash away a treatment.

Rain disrupted both flowering and fruit-set posing all sorts of problems for even ripening but summer was the third driest in the last 20 years.

July was mostly dry, but overcast and not overly sunny, however August was hotter with more sunshine hours which went some way to counter the soggy soils and induce a degree of hydric stress.

However, more rain arrived in early September and again towards the end of the month, with cool temperatures throughout, bringing low sugar levels, dilution and botrytis risks (a challenge not faced in 20 years at some estates).

I’ve covered the weather in detail in two earlier articles, more generally here and month-by-month here.


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Click here for more Bordeaux 2024 notes and scores


Bordeaux 2024 review: The 21 best wines of the vintage


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