Description

For free (because of its incompleteness), download an assessment of the 135 samples of Bordeaux 2019 that I was sent, without having the opportunity to taste in situ. With just three exceptions (but without checking first) every wine where I had also assessed the 2018 vintage, scored more this year. It is an excellent vintage.

The report focuses on the 39 wines that I scored more than 90 points, with many inexpensive and less well known names among them.

This unusual En Primeur campaign, with release prices being announced before scores published, and occasionally before samples even tasted, may present a good buying opportunity. With a stock market more volatile than the acidity in a cheap bottle of Chianti, and bank interest rates at next to nothing, Primeur Bordeaux does seem like a safer financial bet than it has for over a decade. It also might not – in China the market for Bordeaux, and wine in general, is in a state of flux and if their desire to purchase wanes, the investment potential may be more limited.

As always though, my advice is to buy only if you are going to be happy to drink it one day because a) you might have to and b) it is a drink, after all.

Rod Smith MW