Dopo un inverno mite, senza gelate né grandine, da marzo a giugno è arrivata la pioggia. Peronospora e colatura sono comparse presto e non sono mai scomparse del tutto. Alcuni viticoltori hanno raddoppiato i trattamenti, poiché le tempeste hanno ripetutamente spazzato via la protezione. Alla fine della stagione, le precipitazioni si sono attestate intorno ai 1.200 millimetri, quasi il quaranta percento in più del normale. Il prezzo da pagare per le rese è stato pesante. Molti domaine hanno perso tra un quarto e il quaranta percento dei loro bianchi e, in alcuni casi, fino al settanta percento dei loro rossi. Da luglio in poi è tornato il sole, portando un ritmo più costante e uve sane per ciò che è rimasto. La maggior parte è stata vendemmiata tra la seconda e la terza settimana di settembre, con un'attenta selezione sia in vigna che in cantina. Ciò che è emerso è un'espressione più fresca, più fine e più tradizionale della Borgogna. I vini hanno un'alcolizzazione moderata, un'acidità chiara e un senso di sobrietà che piacerà a coloro che amano la linea classica e l'equilibrio della regione. Charles van Canneyt lo ha espresso al meglio: "Non è perché abbiamo avuto maltempo che abbiamo prodotto un vino cattivo". Le nostre prime degustazioni sottolineano questo punto. Da Paul Pernot i bianchi mostrano una freschezza vibrante e una profonda acidità, con il Puligny-Montrachet Les Folatières che si distingue per la sua tensione e grazia. Da Alvina Pernot, i 2024 portano la freschezza del 2017 e l'accessibilità del 2021, ma con maggiore profondità e compostezza. Louis Jadot, alle prese con pesanti perdite e una stagione impegnativa, ha parlato di "lottare per mantenere la Borgogna accessibile", producendo tuttavia vini precisi e armoniosi, tra cui St Aubin En Remilly, uno dei nostri appezzamenti preferiti e un'esclusiva FINE+RARE che siamo orgogliosi di aggiudicarci ogni anno, imbottigliato solo in magnum. Da Hudelot-Noëllat e Fourrier, i volumi sono incredibilmente piccoli, ma i vini sono limpidi, fragranti e inconfondibilmente tipici del luogo. La domanda sul mercato continua a evolversi. Negli Stati Uniti, il panorama delle aste rimane forte, con i collezionisti alla ricerca di vini d'annata in un contesto post-tariffario. Il Regno Unito continua a essere leader in termini di diversità e valore, supportato da una delle reti di importazione e agenzie più sofisticate al mondo. L'Europa centrale, in particolare Italia e Svizzera, è in costante espansione, con i collezionisti che guardano oltre i classici, pur continuando a preferire il Borgogna bianco, il Bordeaux rosso e lo Champagne. Hong Kong rimane il mercato in più rapida crescita per i vini bianchi, con un entusiasmo costante per lo Chardonnay pregiato e lo Champagne maturo.
 
Come il Borgogna En Primeur nascerà in questo contesto è incerto e certamente diverso dal Bordeaux En Primeur. Il crescente predominio del Borgogna bianco e la combinazione di rarità, qualità, desiderabilità e, in alcuni casi, valore ancora reale, segnano un'emergere che sembra al di sopra delle denominazioni e delle tendenze. Il Borgogna continua a evolversi secondo i propri ritmi, plasmato più dalle decisioni dei singoli viticoltori che dal ritmo collettivo. Quanto lontano arriverà questo ritmo dipenderà dalla rilevanza in un mercato in cui persino Michelin mette in discussione il suo marchio di punta, Robert Parker, e dove voci indipendenti come Jamie Goode, spinte da una curiosità sconfinata e libere da vincoli editoriali, continuano a mettere alla prova ogni ipotesi. Con Borgogna 2024, la scarsità definirà la campagna, ma lo sarà anche l'autenticità. I ​​vini sono plasmati dalle avversità, ma portano grazia e purezza. Quest'anno ci ricorda perché la Borgogna rimane la più umana tra le regioni vinicole pregiate. La prossima settimana condivideremo i nostri primi profili di produttori e le prime note di degustazione da tutta la Borgogna. Per ora, brindiamo ai viticoltori che hanno resistito all'anno e a un'annata fatta non di abbondanza, ma di spirito. 
Scritto da Patrick O'Connor (CEO), Craig Norton (Amministratore Delegato) e Antoine Ninot (Senior Buyer) di FINE+RARE, a seguito di una recente visita in Borgogna. Scopri tutti i Borgogna 2024 finora pubblicati.

La scorsa settimana siamo stati in Borgogna per un’analisi pre-campagna, incontrando alcune delle voci più rappresentative della regione. Conversazioni sincere, atmosfera riflessiva: ogni viticoltore ha raccontato un’annata che ha messo alla prova pazienza e resilienza.

Our early look at Burgundy’s 2024 vintage reveals a year of challenges and quiet beauty — shaped by resilience, balance and authenticity.

A first look at the Burgundy 2024 vintage

Borgogna 2024: prime impressioni

What springs to mind when you think of Bordeaux? Probably châteaux the size of medieval palaces, formal dinners, and rows and rows of pristine vines, neatly manicured rose bushes the only other signs of plant life. What you’re unlikely to be imagining are cow horns stuffed with manure buried in the ground, or horse-drawn ploughs churning through earthworm-rich soil. ‘In the past, in Bordeaux, you were scared to say you were growing biodynamically,’ says Corinne Comme, who manages 10ha of biodynamic vines at Château du Champ des Treilles in Entre-Deux-Mers with her husband Jean-Michel. ‘Now it’s trendy.’ An engineer and geologist, Jean-Michel Comme was behind the first transition of a grand cru classé estate on Bordeaux’s Left Bank to biodynamics. Although he and Corinne first came across the concept in the mid-1990s, he didn’t begin to advocate for the approach at Château Pontet-Canet in Pauillac until the early 2000s. ‘Corinne was scared,’ he recalls. ‘She thought they would fire me.’ "Behind the more esoteric elements is a series of principles that have been shown to improve soil health and vine strength" Originally laid out in a series of lectures by Austrian philosopher, scientist and social reformer Rudolf Steiner in 1924, biodynamic farming emerged as a holistic approach to agriculture before quickly evolving into formal certification movements. At its core, biodynamic farming centres on soil health and biodiversity; most distinctively, it operates according to the lunar calendar, with practitioners timing agricultural activities around specific ‘fruit days’, ‘root days’, ‘leaf days’ and ‘flower days’ to align with cosmic rhythms believed to influence plant growth and agricultural processes. For many in Bordeaux – Jean-Michel Comme included – this all sounded a bit wacky. ‘I was young, full of expectations about chemistry; the way biodynamics was presented was so remote that I felt it was crazy,’ Comme says. ‘But with experience, we did change our minds.’ Why? Because behind the more esoteric elements is a series of principles that have been shown to improve soil health and vine strength. In vineyards, biodynamic farming means specific practices such as hand-harvesting, using natural composts made with specific herbal and mineral preparations, avoiding chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and treating the entire vineyard as a self-sustaining ecosystem. In the cellar, there’s an emphasis on minimal intervention, using native yeasts, avoiding commercial additives, keeping sulphur use to under 70ppm, and employing gentle pressing and ageing techniques that respect the wine’s natural development. While biodynamics took root in regions like the Loire and Burgundy in the 1990s, biodynamic winemaking in Bordeaux largely began in the new millennium, with just two early St-Emilion exceptions: Château Meylet, which has been practising it since 1987, and Château Fonroque, experimenting since 1995 with direction from Loire legend Nicolas Joly. This delay largely stemmed from two factors. First, Bordeaux’s humid maritime climate means that vines are especially vulnerable to both downy and powdery mildew, making the avoidance of synthetic fungicides a risky business. Second, large châteaux with multimillioneuro operations were reluctant to abandon the technological viticulture and winemaking that had built their global reputations in the first place. Comme, however, was convinced of the virtues of biodynamics. He began by seeking the assistance of François Bouchet. The Loire Valley winemaker was one of the first in France to pioneer biodynamics, also consulting for Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Domaine Leroy and Domaine Leflaive in Burgundy. Bouchet guided the transition to biodynamics at Comme’s Château du Champ des Treilles; then, he persuaded Château Pontet-Canet owner Alfred Tesseron of its merits. In 2004, it was trialled on 15ha (about 20% of the estate’s total growing area) of the fifth growth at which Comme was also technical director. A severe mildew outbreak in 2007 led to the use of pesticides, undoing three years of progress, but it then became a crucial lesson that strengthened their long-term commitment to biodynamics. ‘They believed the fruit had more expression, more brightness,’ says the current technical director at Pontet-Canet, Mathieu Bessonnet, who reveals that they converted the whole of the growing area soon after. ‘It’s obviously much more difficult, time-consuming and expensive, so it was very risky,’ he adds. Since then, biodynamic farming has become a significant and growing practice across different classed growths in the region, with some of the most prestigious estates – such as Château Latour and Château Palmer – adopting biodynamic methods (the latter certified). ‘The link between the wines and the place where the fruit came from had become less and less obvious,’ says Château Palmer’s technical director Thomas Duroux, commenting on the region’s turn to the trend. He notes that, since the noughties, many have adopted organic practices in a bid to reverse this perceived drop in terroir definition. ‘Biodynamics is, in a way, the same story as organic farming, but with a larger vision,’ he adds. This shared perspective has led to more cooperation between practitioners. Every spring, the Médoc branch of the Biodynamic Agriculture Movement gathers at Château Ferrière. After unearthing a thousand manure-filled cow horns and replacing them with silica-filled ones (a process reversed in autumn to produce preparations 500 and 501, required for Demeter certification), participants share wines and gardengrown salads. The humus removed from the cow horns is stored in a cold, damp facility and made available to members. ‘We do that for free,’ says Claire Lurton, owner of Château Ferrière. ‘It’s a community.’ Though ‘community’ might be too strong a word for some, these gatherings symbolise a deepening professional exchange that has emerged among estates of all sizes through the practice of biodynamic winemaking. In fact, the shift among the classed growths has happened at the same time as these practices have been adopted by smaller growers arriving in the region. Christophe Landry of Château des Graviers, for example, returned to Arsac in the 1990s and began practising biodynamics around the same time as Comme at Pontet-Canet. He’s consulted for the Lurton estates and other properties. Originally from Minervois in Languedoc, Michel Théron established Clos du Jaugueyron nearby and has been certified biodynamic since 2008, while Laurence Alias and Pascale Choime – who are both from southwest France – established Closerie des Moussis, a patchwork of sites across 2ha, including a 170-year-old pre-phylloxera plot leased from Théron. On the Right Bank, other producers began switching lanes even earlier. Le Puy, owned by the Amoreau family, began practising in 1998, with certification since 2013, and Château Gombaude-Guillot in Pomerol has been certified biodynamic since 2006. While larger estates like Latour and Palmer collaborate on issues like mildew, smaller producers tend to engage more with one another. Shared biodynamic practices, however, are definitely helping to break down barriers. For example, Château Haut-Bages Libéral maintains regular communication with its neighbours at Château Latour, and the son of Théron at Clos du Jaugueyron interned at Château Palmer for two months. Can we speak of a unity of praxis? Not exactly. There is considerable variation in which aspects of biodynamics winemakers emphasise, regardless of estate size. The primary aim across the board is achieving living soil with rich biodiversity to promote deep-rooted vines. In pursuit of this, some winemakers emphasise tree growing or cover cropping (like Haut-Bages Libéral, which also recently planted a variety of local and fruit trees). Others, such as Le Puy, let nature take its course, allowing a diverse array of plants and flowers to sprout from the earth. Whether certified or not, biodynamic practitioners throughout Bordeaux use homeopathic treatments like nettle teas for the vines – they are believed to stimulate soil health, enhance plant immunity and improve nutrient uptake. More important than any of this, however, is the concept of energy. How can the energy of the plant be retained as its raw material transforms into wine? Every winemaker I visited was at least intrigued by the concept – and most were captivated. After a few days in the sometimes eerily flat Médoc, I drive through the verdant hills of St-Emilion to Le Puy, arriving with a raised spirit. Standing before a 5,000-year-old Celtic cromlech, Harold Langlais, the estate’s director, tells me, ‘Le Puy is a place of energy and life,’ pointing to its deep history as an intersection of water springs. At modern-day Le Puy, this philosophy extends from the vines to the cellar. Indeed, many others I speak to express that, since adopting biodynamics, the most striking change in their wines has been an increase in ‘energy’. It’s a term without a precise definition, but according to Château Palmer’s makers, something shifted with the 2015 vintage, the second year after full conversion. ‘You cannot measure it,’ Thomas Duroux says. ‘You can just feel it.’ At Château Durfort-Vivens, where the vineyard was operating under biodynamic principles by 2013 (with full conversion by 2016), owner Gonzague Lurton recalls the 2014 vintage as ‘the first where you really feel the energy of biodynamics’. It’s tactile and warming, with a sophisticated grip and charm. ‘It’s what I love – the linearity of tannins, never weak from start to finish. With many of the estates I visited, their wines showed an immediate appeal, vibrant even in their youth. Is energy just another way of describing freshness? Laurence Alias at Closerie des Moussis trained as an agricultural engineer; for her, energy and vitality are tied to the physical properties of grapes grown biodynamically. ‘We have more acidity, that’s an analytic fact,’ she tells me, standing in front of a newly acquired plot of vines bordered by forest. It might be romantic to think of energy as something ineffable, but it’s also rooted in what remains within the grapes. ‘Our idea of energy is based more on Einstein than Steiner,’ Langlais later qualifies. ‘Energy is matter.’ Biodynamic winemaking in Bordeaux: five to follow Château Pontet-Canet At the 55ha Pontet-Canet estate in Pauillac, an immensely smooth operation is palpable. Winemakers here have spent almost two decades honing their biodynamic craft, continually moving towards a goal of self-sufficiency for the estate. Sturdy Comtois horses, introduced in 2008, now work half the vineyard, preventing soil compaction. Vineyards are sprayed over a single day using compost and herbal teas produced from plants grown in and around the property and processed in the state-of-the-art infusion room. Biodiversity-boosting fruit trees and hedges have been planted. The estate even employs a carpenter who repurposes wood from vats used on the property. Ageing involves custom-made wooden eggs and qvevri-style amphorae, with no fining and minimal filtration. The result? A Pauillac with untypical levels of energy and minerality, and a plush, velvety texture. But it’s more than that – according to Bessonnet, thanks to a low-intervention approach across the board, ‘you can really feel the soil.’ Château Palmer Thomas Duroux’s conviction in biodynamics is based in what he calls a ‘holistic vision’. ‘We started to see the entire place as a living organism,’ he says of Château Palmer, one of the most storied and historically significant third-growth estates in Bordeaux. When converting (a process that started in 2009), the Margaux estate was initially guided by François Bouchet’s son Matthieu, but now it follows its own evolving philosophy, integrating cover crops, animals for fertilisation and estate-grown vegetables and meat. ‘It’s just going back to agricultural common sense,’ Duroux says. ‘That was the way to grow anything before World War II.’ This respect for nature results in wines that are deeply tied to their terroir. ‘If I had to describe the wines how they are today, compared to how they were before, I’ll just say that it’s not a revolution, but we have the feeling that the wines have a better identity,’ says Duroux. He likens biodynamics to restoring an old painting: ‘Suddenly, you see small details that you were not able to see because of the dust.’ The estate uses stainless-steel vats for fermentation and temperature-controlled rooms for barrel-ageing, combined with nativeyeast and low-sulphur winemaking, to produce its esteemed Alter Ego and Château Palmer cuvées; both have been increasingly celebrated among critics and drinkers since the turn to biodynamics. ‘We just think it does help to go a little bit further in the interpretation of the place,’ says Duroux. Château Durfort-Vivens Standing over a rustic sorting table explaining how it used to work, Gonzague Lurton is visibly passionate about the savoir-faire of the past. This sensibility is reflected in the current winemaking practices, too, and in the second-growth Margaux estate’s reputation (and critics’ scores) increasing year on year. The thing to emphasise is that what began with a biodynamic approach in the vineyards led to a series of domino effects that changed the character of the wines. In search of what Lurton calls greater ‘singularity’, the proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon had already risen to over 90% by 2014 (from around 75%); and with the use of indigenous yeasts during fermentation and the reduction of sulphur levels over time (initially sparked by Demeter’s upper limits of 70mg/l), the wines have become more aromatically complex and expressive. The introduction of amphorae by Italian producer Tava has allowed for microoxidation without overextraction, contributing to a more delicate balance of flavours, with the 2019 estate wine a blend aged one third in amphorae and the rest in barrel. ‘It’s not a big wine,’ says Lurton. ‘And it’s what I was looking for with biodynamics, in terms of style.’ Château des Graviers Christophe Landry’s pioneering status in Margaux stems from an instinct refined over decades at his own estate. He grows medicinal plants — horsetail, absinthe, calendula, chamomile — for vineyard treatments, as well as using the manure from his own cows. ‘What we need to remember is that biodynamics isn’t just a practice,’ he tells me. ‘It’s about finding your own path to self-sufficiency.’ His precision extends to the cellar, where he uses concrete tanks, amphorae and oak barrels (produced according to the biodynamic calendar) tailored to each of the five cépages’ oxygenation needs, then ages the wines for different lengths of time. Timing is everything, with harvest choices also following the biodynamic calendar. Obsessive care for the vines’ life cycles goes hand in hand with the level of precision in the cellar. The outcome is two phenomenal wines that are, as Landry puts it, ‘thirstquenching’. Château des Graviers and Quintessence — which contains a higher proportion of Petit Verdot and is aged longer in barrel and amphorae — are aromatically expressive, velvety and strikingly lively, with the latter offering more depth and an enveloping finish. Expanding to 18ha, Landry has also turned his focus to Clos Dufourg, cultivating vines on previously wild land nearby and hand-building a striking new cellar with cement tanks painted with clay from the surrounding earth. Le Puy For technical director Harold Langlais, the Le Puy estate’s significance lies in how it challenges Bordeaux’s conventional identity. Outside of the region’s traditional focus on appellations and classifications, Le Puy sits on a plateau near St-Emilion. The estate’s land is unusual, with no topsoil but a deep limestone bedrock beneath red-brown clay, which forces the vines to develop deep roots to access the earth’s natural water and nutrients. This is further supported by horse-ploughing and biodynamic sprays made from horsetail, buckthorn and nettles, which grow on the property. ‘Our approach focuses on rooting the vine deep,’ Langlais explains, ‘encouraging it to search out hidden nutrients.’ A vigorous wind circulates around the vines, and Langlais explains the effects of the elements. ‘The beauty of Le Puy is that it’s an acid factory. The whole place creates acidity in the berries.’ The biodynamic philosophy extends to the winemaking, with two different processes applied to their 100% Merlot cuvées. Cuvée Emilien uses a ‘decantation method’, or ‘fermentation by infusion’, while Barthélemy is produced with zero sulphites and a process of lees-stirring called ‘dynamisation’, which is done on fruit days and involves a specific motion to create a vortex in the old barrels it ages in. ‘Barthélemy is much more intense,’ Langlais says. ‘All the matter taken by the plant is in there.’

Written for Club Oenologique in 2025, Joel Hart visits Bordeaux to track the region’s belated embrace of biodynamic winemaking. While other French regions ploughed ahead, Bordeaux had its reasons for delayed adoption. Yet now the practice is booming, and Hart gauges its employment across estates.

Written for Club Oenologique, contributor Joel Hart visits Bordeaux to track the region’s belated embrace of biodynamic winemaking. 

Taking root: the rise of biodynamic winemaking in Bordeaux

There are times when you put a question to a winemaker and he puffs out his cheeks and rubs his chin and you know he’s thinking, ‘Journalists.’ When I ask Promontory’s David Cilli what exactly is meant by ‘interpretation of terroir’, he courteously describes the process of trying to get the wine to reflect the character of the land. But he gives the impression my question was like quizzing Monet on how he got his effects. If you don’t get it, you probably won’t. The character of Promontory, on the day I visit, is quite something. It’s early May and the rain, which has been falling steadily all night, has turned to a lashing downpour that has raindrops bouncing six inches off the windscreen. We’re in a jeep piloted by winegrowing director Cory Empting and since turning off the main road we’ve been climbing steadily through dripping stands of oak with pocket-handkerchief vineyards between them. ‘Shall we stay in the car?’ asks Empting. ‘If we could,’ Will Harlan suggests from the back seat. I’m here with Empting, Cilli and Harlan. Bill Harlan has appeared briefly but I don’t see him again until we sit down to taste. He formally handed over control of Harlan Estate, Promontory, Bond and The Mascot in 2021, appointing 37-year-old Will managing director. Cilli (44) arrived in 2012 and is in charge of vineyard and winemaking at Promontory. Promontory is an 840-acre fastness, a deep valley folded into the foothills of Mount Veeder, on the west side of the Napa Valley. From the highway, you think the looming ridge you’re looking at is the edge of Sonoma. But there’s another ridge beyond and between them this interesting domain. It’s remote, even by Napa standards (contrary to opinion, there are plenty of wild spaces in the county). The ultra-refined French Laundry is a couple of miles away but it might be in Wisconsin for all the relevance it has up here. Bill Harlan had come upon it hiking in the 1980s. ‘I used the Carmelite monastery [we’d passed it on the way up] as a base and just started climbing’. There were no vines but he was intrigued by its seclusion. It might be possible vineland for the Napa project he had in mind. In the end, Harlan Estate was founded less than a mile to the north but for 25 years Harlan kept the idea of that parcel tucked under his hat (he never mentioned it, Will says) before it came on the market in 2007 and he snapped it up. "Vineyards, some a mere half-acre, are etched into towering, wooded hillsides and drop down into cavernous combes dense with oak and fir" The owner – the Harlans don’t reveal who that is – had planted 80-odd acres of Cabernet Sauvignon. It was neglected, the vines overgrown. Trees had been felled and never collected. ‘It was a mess,’ Will says. ‘It looked like a logging operation.’ But it is magnificent. Vineyards, some a mere half-acre, are etched into towering, wooded hillsides and drop down into cavernous combes dense with oak and fir. The whole estate is thickly forested, the vines often shaded on three sides. An old drovers’ road, running through the woods, will suddenly open out on a wide vista of vineyard and scree. Everything is deeply, lushly green in the steadily falling spring rain. The geology of the land is unusual, in that it rests on two distinct fault lines and consists of all three soil types that are found in Napa: volcanic, sedimentary and metamorphic. ‘You get all three in the same soil pit,’ Cilli notes. This, combined with the wild variation in aspect and the microclimate of the valley-within-a-valley, gives credence to Harlan’s claims that this part of Napa is like nowhere else in California. When the celebrated soil scientists Claude and Lydia Bourguignon came, they found the experience ‘novel’. Cilli said he fell in love with Promontory at first sight. It reminded him, in part, of his native Tuscany, but it was the wildness that captivated him, ‘I love that character that you can see in the wines.’ He said it was probably ‘the only project that could keep me in the valley.’ You get the impression none of them can quite believe their luck. ‘It somehow redefined what looks beautiful,’ Will says. It also redefined their ideas of winemaking. He goes on: ‘We were used to control. Harlan in the 1990s was obsessed with organisation and uniformity but Promontory was wild.’ The theme of wildness recurs. Harvest times are key to ‘find a way for it to come through,’ Will says. Empting: ‘Pick too late and you lose the ruggedness.’ Ageing, in the magnificent Howard Backen-designed chai, is all in Stockinger Austrian oak barrels ranging in size from 10,000 to 46,000 litres, for up to 36 months. ‘The fine-yet-tight tannins required longer barrel-ageing but [we] didn’t want the wine to be overpowered by new oak’. It’s a constant process of refinement and improvement – ‘we learn something new each season’. Empting: ‘It has blown every expectation out of the water. We were excited and we were scared. We didn’t know what this beast would be. Our learning curve has been very steep, it remains very steep. At least now we’re starting to get our arms around it but at the beginning, it was like: God, we cannot figure this thing out.” "I found in the 2016 a moment where the various elements come together: the savoury nose, the fine tannins, the weight without heaviness" You have to remember we’re talking about winemaking here, not Wittgenstein. But ‘interpretation of terroir’, if it’s to mean anything at all, should be taken seriously. I’ve seen vineland all over the world – rock-strewn fields in the Andean foothills, rainless Spanish deserts – but I’ve never seen anything like Promontory. Were I to be tasked with bottling the soul of that vineyard, I’d reach for metaphor as well. And so we come to the missing shade of blue. This is the concept propounded by the 18th-century philosopher David Hume, that an idea can be formulated without a previous sensory impression to give rise to it. He asked, Could a shade of blue missing from a spectrum be imagined by an observer? Harlan says (with a smile – he does have a degree in philosophy) that Promontory is the missing shade of red. ‘Until you’ve seen and experienced it, you don’t know that it’s missing. And so for us this was that final piece. The piece that wasn’t there that we had the opportunity to understand and try to translate into the wine.’ The next morning, in gorgeous May sunshine, we gather to taste. It’s almost the same group, though smaller, that did the mighty vertical of Harlan estate from magnum in 2020. Bill Harlan is there (he sweetly thanks the team for allowing him to taste, saying it’s the first full vertical of Promontory he’s ever done), Will, Empting, Cilli and the journalist Elaine Brown. We wonder, at the end, if there is thread that runs through the wines. In my notes the words ‘deceptively light’ recur, as do ‘structure’ and ‘stone’. Reaching for metaphor again, Will Harlan compares the structure of the 2016 to cathedral stone, which has ‘both weight and lightness. It’s intricately carved and light filters through the windows.’ I found in the 2016 a moment where the various elements come together: the savoury nose, the fine tannins, the weight without heaviness. Will Harlan calls this vintage an ‘inflection point’ and notes how the tannins are the ‘main differentiators’. Yes, agrees Cilli, ‘and because of the character of levity and lift, we have to be precise with the tannins.’ The younger vintages have an astonishing latent energy, tannins under tight rein, aromas bursting, the fruit compacted. Brown and I were struck not by the sophistication of these wines but by their honesty. Brown WhatsApped me later. ‘Promontory is the most transparent to place. The wines are impressively well crafted and elegant while still offering an almost wild or primal complex of flavours.’ "The wines are unmistakeably Californian but they are also unlike anything I’ve tasted in Napa" ‘How do we take wine from a wilderness and have sophistication?’ Will asked. It’s a great question – with their resources, the Harlans could do anything they liked with Promontory. After all, they have to make a wine that will please their audience. But this was so unexpected. The tasting revealed a keen focus on the land and the vintage. The difference between the years was often marked – the challenge of 2015 for example showed in the wine – yet we could see that common thread running through, even as the wines increased in elegance. And what of Will’s quest for the missing shade of red? The wines are unmistakeably Californian – that splendid 2017 could come from nowhere else – but they are also unlike anything I’ve tasted in Napa, which is quite a claim, in the world’s most cultivated wine region. Perhaps the last word should go to Bill Harlan, who started the whole thing. He speaks hardly at all during the tasting, his Old Testament face giving little away. At the end of the morning, he talks of his fascination with the ‘ongoing discovery’ of the project. The wines have character, layers and depth, he says, and – by way of praising their authenticity – he notes, ‘You never know what’s coming next.’

Written for Club Oenologique, contributor Adam Lechmere visits California to trace the evolution of Promontory, one of Napa’s most magnificent sites, with a vertical tasting of 14 vintages revealing the wild beauty, elegance and remarkable evolution of its wines.

Written for Club Oenologique, contributor Adam Lechmere visits California to trace the evolution of Promontory, one of Napa’s most magnificent sites.

Wildness captured: tasting 14 vintages of Promontory

It has been an exceptional few weeks for FINE+RARE events. From Hong Kong to London, Milan to the Scottish Highlands, this run of extraordinary occasions – each distinct in character – has been united by the thread that runs through everything we do: bringing people closer to the world's most exceptional wines and spirits in settings that do them justice. Tiberio Dinner Table by Sandy Keung, Hong Kong — Wednesday 21 May The run began with one of the most eye-opening evenings of recent weeks, centred on the wines of Tiberio, the Abruzzo estate whose commitment to a no-oak philosophy — for both fermentation and ageing, with the sole exception of Archivio — continues to challenge assumptions about what Italian wine can achieve without the influence of wood. The evening opened with three vintages of Fonte Canale: 2016, 2018 and 2023. The 2023 drew immediate attention — many guests found it hard to believe that a wine of such depth and power had not seen any oak influence whatsoever. Vibrant acidity and a clear capacity for long-term ageing were immediately apparent. The 2016, with more time in bottle, had moved into more evolved territory, displaying nutty and dried fruit notes while retaining impressive freshness. The 2018 proved a wonderful companion to the mixed clam dish, its texture and salinity enhancing the natural sweetness of the seafood. Among the whites, the standout for many was the Quarmari 2023 — exceptionally aromatic, revealing layers of beeswax, jasmine, caramel, lemon cream, basil and sweet spice. It was universally appreciated around the table, with some guests going so far as to compare its quality and presence to Corton-Charlemagne. The reds were equally compelling. Four vintages of Colle Vota — 2014, 2018, 2019 and 2021 — demonstrated remarkable depth and character across the board. Full-bodied and structured, with pronounced notes of dark fruits, liquorice, cedar, cinnamon and spice, the 2018 and 2021 in particular showed great power and concentration, their style subtly reminiscent, for some guests, of Château de Tours from Rayas. Paired with the lamb neck course, these wines were in their element. What surprised many most was that, despite their weight and complexity, not one had been aged in oak — a testament to the intrinsic power and expression of old vines. The inaugural 2014 vintage of Colle Vota was a particularly memorable moment. Despite showing early tertiary notes, it retained excellent fruit, freshness and structure, offering a compelling demonstration of the outstanding ageing potential these old-vine wines possess. It was an evening that left a very strong impression on everyone present, and a powerful reminder that great winemaking is, above all, about the vine and the land. Update by Jonathan Leung, Sales Manager, Hong Kong Castello di Ama — Vigneto Bellavista Vertical Dinner The River Café, London — Thursday 18 June One of the most memorable evenings of the year so far took place at The River Café, where proprietor Lorenza Sebasti guided a remarkable retrospective of Castello di Ama's Bellavista — the estate's defining wine, drawn from one of the highest and most historic sites in Gaiole in Chianti. Presented across nine vintages spanning more than three decades, from 1990 through to the newly released 2022, the dinner offered a rare opportunity to explore both the evolution and the extraordinary consistency of one of Tuscany's great wines. The oldest vintages were deeply impressive. The 1990, 1995, 2004 and 2006 demonstrated that great Chianti Classico belongs among the world's most ageworthy wines, maintaining freshness, detail and vivacity decades after harvest. For many around the table, however, the greatest surprise came from the 2011 — universally praised and the favourite of numerous guests — which has now entered an ideal drinking window, combining maturity, complexity and harmony in a way that rewards the patience Bellavista has always asked of its admirers. Among the younger vintages, the 2018 impressed for its purity and transparency, while the 2021 and 2022 elevated the conversation further. Both displayed remarkable polish, power and refinement alongside the freshness that has become an increasingly important hallmark of the site. It was the 2022 Bellavista that generated the greatest excitement. Awarded a perfect 100-point score by Antonio Galloni, the wine was the subject of considerable discussion throughout the evening, though the consensus was clear: the score tells only a small part of the story. What made the 2022 so fascinating was what it represents — a convergence of decades of technical progress, viticultural understanding and winemaking refinement in a single wine. It possessed concentration and potency, but delivered these with remarkable elegance, precision and energy. More than any previous vintage tasted, it felt like a blueprint for the future of the estate. Throughout the evening, Lorenza and Arturo offered invaluable personal reflections on the evolution of Castello di Ama, transforming the dinner from a vertical tasting into a living history of one of Italy's great estates. The River Café, with its understated elegance and deep connection to Italian cuisine, proved the perfect setting. The main takeaway was a simple truth: Bellavista is one of Italy's great wines, and only growing in stature and completeness. Across more than thirty years, through changing vintages and shifting climates, it has maintained a consistency of purpose and identity that very few wines anywhere in the world can match. Update by Dara de Lacy, Senior Sales Manager, UK EAWCO Rarities Selection — Bowmore & Springbank Masterclass FINE+RARE HQ, London A masterclass that set the bar high from the very first pour. We were delighted to welcome Christian Leusder, founder and owner of East Asia Whisky Company, to FINE+RARE headquarters for an evening dedicated to some of the rarest independent bottlings in existence. East Asia Whisky Company has been a longstanding and deeply valued partner of FINE+RARE. An exclusive independent bottler built on principles of understatement, exclusivity and meticulous attention to detail, EAWCO's portfolio spans blue-chip distilleries including Macallan, Bowmore, Springbank, Chichibu and Caroni. They remain the only independent bottler to have released multiple successful Mizunara cask bottlings from these houses — releases that have, remarkably, achieved higher prices than the original distillery bottlings of the same vintages. Christian guided guests through the history of the company before leading a tutored exploration of five extraordinarily rare expressions from Bowmore and Springbank: Bowmore PX Mizunara, 31 Year Old Bowmore Japan Edition, 30 Year Old Springbank Lumen Refill Sherry, 30 Year Old Springbank Yokai Series Asanoha Dragon, 24 Year Old Springbank Yokai Series Yurei (Ghost) Cat, 25 Year Old With a few surprises woven in along the way, the evening was a genuine privilege — one of those rare tastings where every bottle opened carries real weight and significance. For those who were unable to attend, a small number of these bottlings remain available, though given how few exist, they are being offered very selectively. All come very highly recommended. Update by Morgan Richards, Senior Account Manager An Extraordinary Journey Through Bordeaux's Greatest Estates Trattoria de La Trebia, Milan — Tuesday 23 June In Milan, an evening of extraordinary ambition brought together a side-by-side exploration of the 2012 and 2014 vintages through Bordeaux's most celebrated First Growth estates and the legendary Petrus. Far more than a tasting, this was a rare opportunity for guests to compare the expression of each château across two very different vintages — discovering how terroir, philosophy and vintage character shape wines that stand among the finest ever produced. The lineup was nothing short of remarkable. Across both vintages, guests tasted Château Margaux, Château Cheval Blanc, Château Haut-Brion, Petrus, Château Lafite Rothschild, Château Mouton Rothschild and Château La Mission Haut-Brion — fourteen wines in all, representing the very pinnacle of Bordeaux winemaking. The tasting was complemented by an exclusive five-course menu designed by the culinary team at Trattoria de La Trebia, crafted to enhance and showcase each wine served throughout the evening. If one wine captured the room above all others, it was the Château Haut-Brion 2012. Explosive from the first moment, with blackcurrant, smoke and herbs, it simply grew in the glass — every passing minute revealing more power, richness and intensity. Full-bodied, multi-layered and framed by wonderfully chewy tannins, this is a wine of real charm: approachable now yet built to last another twenty years with ease. A blend of 65.5% Merlot, 32.5% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Cabernet Franc, it offers extraordinary quality for its level — the kind of Haut-Brion that gives joy from the very first sip. Not to be missed. The Château Margaux 2012 also showed beautifully, drawing considerable admiration from guests throughout the evening. Designed for collectors, enthusiasts and connoisseurs alike, the dinner brought together extraordinary wines, great conversation and a shared passion for excellence — everything a FINE+RARE evening in Italy should be. Update by Jonathan Bruni, Sales Director, Continental Europe Visit to Hazelwood House Speyside, Scotland — Thursday 25 to Friday 26 June The series closed with something truly special: a private, two-day visit to Hazelwood House, the Gordon family home in the Scottish Highlands and the inspiration behind the House of Hazelwood collection — one of the world's greatest inventories of aged and rare Scotch whisky. Over two days, a small group of guests were given rare access to a world that very few ever see: private tours of the Balvenie and Glenfiddich distilleries, a whisky tasting drawn from House of Hazelwood's private reserves, a Gordon family archive session led by archivist Andy Fairgrieve, and an evening of wine, whisky and storytelling over a four-course dinner at the house itself — each course paired with exceptional wines from FINE+RARE alongside whiskies of extraordinary age and provenance. It was the kind of experience that simply cannot be replicated — not just rare access, but a genuine connection to the family, the place and the history from which these remarkable whiskies come. These past few weeks have captured everything we love about what we do at FINE+RARE – connecting people with the world's most remarkable wines and spirits, in the most exceptional settings, surrounded by the stories and the people that bring them to life.  We look forward to sharing what lies ahead for the rest of the year. Interested in joining us at future events? We are pleased to announce that it is now possible to browse, book and purchase event tickets directly through our website, with all tickets viewable in your portfolio. Get in touch with your account manager or visit frw.co.uk/events to see what's coming up — we'd love to see you at the next one.

Tiberio in Hong Kong, Castello di Ama and rare whiskies in London, First Growth Bordeaux in Milan and a private Scottish estate — a glimpse of our events programme week to week. Plus, you can now purchase event tickets directly through our website.

From a Tiberio dinner in Hong Kong to rare whiskies in Scotland, a look back at recent FINE+RARE tastings, dinners and experiences.

Looking back at our recent events

Looking across the dramatic slopes of the Douro Valley, it’s easy to imagine that time has stood still here. While Port is steeped in tradition, however, recent decades have seen it leap into the modern era – with no shortage of diverging opinions about the “right” way to produce Port. Just put a handful of the region’s finest in a room and ask about co-planted or monovarietal vineyards, granite or stainless steel, de-stemmed or whole-bunch fruit, trodden by foot or machine, and feel the temperature rise as the debate unfurls.  There is, however, one element that gets surprisingly little press – the all-important fortification, an element that arguably defines Port, and until relatively recently was out of winemakers’ control. Originally spirit was added to harden the wines for long journeys in ships’ bows, preparing them for long voyages, and only became standard in the 19th century.   Once the fruit has been picked, trodden and starts fermenting, producers add spirit – or aguardente, often colloquially (and erroneously) referred to as “brandy” – to halt fermentation, thereby retaining the natural grape sugars that give Port its signature sweetness. The wine is a mere 5-6% alcohol at this stage, and the fortification brings it up to between 19 and 22%. Given the strength that the wine needs to reach, this spirit represents a massive 20% of the final product. Legally, aguardente must be a grape spirit of 77% – significantly lower in strength than the spirits used for other fortified wines (such as Madeira or Vins Doux Naturels, which use a highly rectified grape spirit of 95-96%). This lower alcoholic strength is key; meaning the spirit is less neutral, and therefore has even more of an impact on the final wine.  This spirit has a rocky history which isn’t free from scandal. After a local shortage, 1904 became known as the “Schnapps vintage” – having been fortified largely with a German spirit made from potato and grain. The 1972, ’73 and ’74 vintages saw industrial alcohol used instead of grape distillate. (Responsibility for this latter fraud fell to a French supplier who duped the unknowing Casa do Douro into buying Yugoslavian spirit.) Besides these occasional lapses, the spirit was mainly made from excess wine in the Douro during 19th and early 20th century, but in 1907 the Portuguese Prime Minister João Franco banned the distillation of wine from the Douro, meaning aguardente had to be found elsewhere. Despite presenting 20% of the wine, the spirit used today is far from local, sourced from far beyond Portuguese borders (often Spain and France).  The key date – however – is 1991. Under the authoritarian Estado Novo regime in the early 1930s, a monopoly on the spirit was established, with its supply state-controlled. This continued for over half a century, via the Casa do Douro, and then from 1976 via the Instituto do Vinho do Porto e Douro or IVDP. The freedom to choose which spirit used was only granted to shippers in 1991 – something that David Guimaraens (Head Winemaker at Taylor Fladgate) argues is one of the most significant changes in Port.  “We had no choice, the spirit quality was very average,” Guimaraens laments of the old days. He returned to Portugal, fresh from studying at Australia’s leading winemaking school Roseworthy, in 1990 – just before the shippers gained the freedom to choose their own spirit. “When you use a very clean, fine spirit, when it is young, your fruitiness comes out much more – making it more appealing in youth, almost entirely because of the quality of the spirit,” he explains. He cites two examples – Taylor’s Vargellas Vinha Velha and Croft’s Sērikos – both wines which are made from 100-year-old vineyards, made as they always have been in granite lagares. It is, he argues, only the spirit that has changed in these Ports.   For Guimaraens, the quality of spirit is most apparent in a vintage Port’s “teenage” phase – between 14 and 19 years of age, when it is starting to lose its fruit but not yet fully developed bottle maturity. This transitional phase is, in his view “much more attractive than it used to be in the past”, meaning Port drinkers are safer opening a bottle at any stage of its life. He points to 2000 as a pivotal vintage, when the quality of spirit started to really improve and produce, in his view, some of the region’s finest wines.  “Spirit has been crucial,” Richard Mayson – writer and author specializing in the wines of Portugal – agrees. “When vinification techniques were experimental – the late 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s – you can certainly taste the poor quality spirit in the thinner-quality wines.” He explains that this period saw massive emigration and a resulting shortage of feet to tread the region’s harvests. The early autovinifiers used in lieu of the traditional foot-treading simply didn’t result in the same level of extraction – and therefore have, over time, revealed the underlying spirit quality. There are, of course, exceptions – with some great wines made. He, however, like Guimaraens, feels the 2000 vintage marked a real shift in the class of spirit used.  The uptick in the quality of spirit is one of the reasons – along with the quality of the fruit, viticulture and more – that Carlos Agrellos of Quinta do Noval feels the property has been able to declare every vintage since 2011. “It’s extremely important to choose the right one,” Carlos Agrellos of Quinta do Noval explains of the spirit. He is one of a group of 20 companies – including Niepoort – who have, over the past five years, clubbed together to buy spirit. As smaller operatives, grouping together gives them more clout, enabling them to secure higher-quality spirit for their wines – and fair prices. Each May they meet in Gaia, tasting through a selection of spirits sent over by three or four different producers – all of which are scored blind. In 2020, they tasted 20 different spirits that were approved.   The results of the tasting are shared with everyone, then each company will decide which they wish to buy for their wines. The spirits come from southern France, Spain or Portugal. There are two categories of spirit –those distilled from wine and those from wine lees. The two are very different: the former is favoured by most – having more delicate, fruit and floral aromatics; while the latter was only approved for use in 2014, and is usually stronger in flavour. While in general “wine” spirits are generally the best, the spirits from lees can offer additional complexity. “At Noval,” Agrellos explains, “we tend to blend these two and use them for different types of wine, from white Port to Tawny to Vintage Ports.” There’s no fixed blend, and it varies from year to year, but he tends to use both – with higher-grade spirits for Vintage Ports.   Symington and Fladgate – the giants of the Port trade – purchase such large volumes that they buy their spirit independently. Tom Symington – fifth-generation family member and part of the winemaking team – explains that the spirit used to be a wider cut, and today it’s narrower, resulting in a purer spirit. “We focus on the neutrality, the aromas and the way it reacts with the wine,” he says.   Talking to producers about the style of spirit they look for, there is a general consensus that neutrality is desirable – to what extent, however, varies significantly. Agrellos aims for a more neutral, but slightly floral spirit. The most important thing for him, however, is the volume on the palate: he believes that it is this volume and texture of spirit that is most important for vintage Port. “It’s what will hold the wines for years to come,” he says. He values this above and beyond aromatics, while of course looking for something very pure. It’s this texture that leads him to use some wine-lees distillate – which has much more to offer in that regard, as well as its stronger flavour. The wine distillate by contrast tends to be purer in terms of aromatics, and is sometimes even double-distilled.  While Symington uses the same spirit across all their Ports, David Guimaraens looks to use a different style of spirit depending on the style of Port in question. He is clear, however, that it shouldn’t be part of the house style – but a “neutral oenological product”. He chooses to use one batch of spirit across each style for all the houses, not wanting it to be a differentiating factor, or dominate the quality of the fruit. For example, the spirit used for his vintage wines costs twice as much as that for the most entry-level wines – “And you get your return,” he notes.  He blends his own “master spirit”, combining batches sourced mostly from Portugal and France. “In the early days, it wasn’t as simple as using a clean spirit. To get spirit we wanted, we had to get the wines fermented in a particular way,” Guimaraens explains. With an overly neutral spirit, you risk ending up with a lighter Port; but too high a component of higher alcohol and it interferes with the wine’s organoleptic character, subduing the fruit. Too many spirits are made with excess bulk wine – rather than wine that has been fermented with the express purpose of producing spirit.  Dirk Niepoort favours quality and a little bit of character. “The purest, the best, the most harmonious – but not necessarily the most neutral one” is what he looks for, he explains. At the group tastings, his tastes are reportedly well known, with many of his colleagues able to identify the aguardente he will choose. His preferred spirits are finer, lighter, with more precision, but – importantly – also character. He finds that they tend to come from France, often from Cognac, from vineyards specifically planted with the idea of producing a distillate – not just excess wine. “Our grapes are too good for distillation,” Niepoort explains – the best spirits, in his view, are made with grapes from cool climates, with high yields and high acidity. He normally chooses three different spirits, depending on availability and price, with the very best spirit reserved for his top wines. For any organic wines, of course, they require an organic distillate.   While Niepoort admits the quality of spirit has improved, he doesn’t believe that the quality was nearly as bad as some – such as Guimaraens – imply, telling me people are unnecessarily “ferocious” about it. “I think the Port Wine Institute did a fantastic job in selecting huge amounts of spirit. Considering the huge quantity needed, the average quality was extremely high.” It certainly isn’t stopping him drinking fine vintage Ports – such as a bottle of 1963 Noval he had the pleasure of uncorking recently. Nevertheless, he doesn’t deny that it was a significant step not having to buy a mass product, and it has really opened the market.  It’s not as simple as winemakers having total autonomy, however, with a strict approval system via the IVDP to ensure the quality of spirit being used meets their standards. “It’s not only complicated – it’s expensive,” Niepoort says of the process. He’s found it a struggle to get some spirits approved, with, for example, double-distilled spirits harder to get sign-off than column-distilled liquids – a clear source of frustration. While the process is clearly there to control quality, producers aren’t abusing this independence; in general they are spending more money than ever before – making the whole thing, in Niepoort’s view, futile. “We should have some freedom to do what we want,” he says.  Tom Symington feels that it’s more than just the quality of spirit that has improved the quality of Port. He believes other developments have been more significant, particularly emphasising advancements in winemaking (highlighting the introduction of stainless steel as well as robotic lagares) and viticulture, especially monovarietal vineyards which – he considers – allow them to achieve perfect phenolic ripeness, with no green or raisined fruit. It is more than just the equipment, he notes – it’s the know-how gained over time, and most importantly balancing that with tradition.  “Of course the modern young people will tell you that viticulture is much better today,” says Niepoort dismissively. He prefers to work with old-fashioned growers. Over 90% of his vineyards are over 60 years in age and traditional field blends. He feels that the shift to monovarietal vineyards – dedicated only to five of the region’s many indigenous varieties – is, along with a move toward de-stemmed fruit rather than foot-trodden whole bunches, responsible for changing the style of Port. “The wines became fruitier and darker, but at the same time, thinner,” he explains. Niepoort historically didn’t make any Port themselves, and the 1994 vintage was the first they produced in-house. For him, this shift – from the 1970s and ‘80s – for shippers to own vineyards, rather than merely buying wine in, is the greatest advancement in the region.  The Douro Valley has seen a run of top-rated vintages – with universal declarations in 2011, 2016 and 2017, and some shippers declaring 2018 and now 2019 (including Niepoort). The general rule of three declarations per decade looks set to become a thing of the past. How much can this be attributed to aguardente? Relatively little, perhaps, however it’s hard to argue that this liquid – making up a fifth of the final wine – doesn’t have a role – and depending on who you talk to, the heart – to producing the very best Port.   Read more Editorial or browse our range of Port

Port is much more than just wine. “Brandy” or aguardente makes up 20% of every bottle – and some argue that a shift in the quality of this spirit is key to the wines’ superiority in the last 20 years. Sophie Thorpe finds out more about the firewater that defines the Douro’s age-old fortified wines 

Exploring the firewater – “Brandy” or aguardente that makes up 20% of every bottle – which defines the Douro’s age-old fortified Port wines.

Aguardente vinica and its role in Port winemaking

A spirited debate: the tale of Port’s 20%

About Académie du Vin Founded in Paris in 1973 by Steven Spurrier, the Académie du Vin grew out of a love of wine and a desire to share it with clarity and intelligence. What began as informal wine appreciation courses in 1970s Paris evolved into a publishing house dedicated to the finest wine writing of the past, present, and future. Today, the Académie du Vin Library maintains a deliberately small and carefully curated list, selecting books for their readability, authority and enduring insight into the world’s great wine regions – guided by the belief that fine wine writing, like wine itself, deepens with time. About this article This article presents the introduction to Côte d’Or: The wines and winemakers of the heart of Burgundy (2nd Edition) by Raymond Blake. In it, Blake sets the scene for Burgundy’s most revered stretch of vineyard, exploring the historical, cultural and human forces that shape the Côte d’Or. The introduction offers essential context on place, tradition and the vignerons themselves—laying the groundwork for a deeper understanding of Burgundy’s wines and the people behind them. Introduction The Côte d’Or, the Golden Slope, enjoys a reputation and exerts an influence in the wine world out of all proportion to its size. It possesses none of the grandeur of the Douro Valley, for instance, nor the picture-postcard beauty of South Africa’s winelands. It is not majestic; its beauty is serene, and what strikes the observer time and again is the tiny scale. From north to south it is about 50 kilometres long, is sometimes less than a kilometre wide, and can be driven in little more than an hour. At a push it could be walked in a day. Yet for a thousand or more years this favoured slope has yielded wines that have entranced and delighted wine lovers, with a fair measure of frustration and disappointment thrown in too. Avoiding hyperbole when writing about the Côte d’Or is a problem, for it has held people in thrall for centuries, frequently prompting poetic flights of prose: ‘The Pathetic Fallacy resounds in all our praise of wine … This Burgundy seemed to me, then, serene and triumphant … it whispered faintly, but in the same lapidary phrase, the same words of hope.’ Thus wrote Evelyn Waugh in Brideshead Revisited eighty years ago. Literary critics might cavil at such prolixity, and Waugh himself tamed it severely in later editions, but it was enough to intrigue me decades ago and engender a love for the region and its wines that has never waned. Greater Burgundy is a bigger, more geographically diverse, region than might first be supposed, stretching from Chablis, south-east of Paris, to Beaujolais, north of Lyon. The subject matter of this book, however, is Burgundy’s heart, the Côte d’Or. There is no more celebrated stretch of agricultural land on earth. It has been pored over and analysed, feted and cosseted, obsessed about and sought after for centuries and today, if anything, it exerts a greater pull on wine lovers than ever before. ‘Astronomical’ does not begin to describe the prices now being paid for prized patches of grand and premier cru vineyard, and for the wines produced from them by the top domaines. Such prices hog the headlines and paint a dazzling, though severely one-dimensional, picture of the Côte d’Or today. In the early years of the twenty-first century they are part of the story but they are not the only part. This book aims to get behind the dazzle and flesh out the story, to add some nuance and extra dimension. The Côte d’Or cannot be captured in a sound bite nor, it must be admitted, in a book of this scope – but my hope is that it may add another chapter to the ever-unfolding tale, setting it in the early years of the twenty-first century, a period that may come to be considered by future historians as a golden age for Burgundy but which has brought its own challenges in the shape of those ludicrous prices, the scandal of premature oxidation in the white wines, and the increasing challenge of dealing with extreme weather events such as hail and spring frost. The Côte d’Or has been the subject of forensic scrutiny for centuries, generating a library of books, so why another one now? For the simple reason that it is ever changing. Every year sees new names added to the producers’ roster and old ones slipping away, and thanks to this ongoing evolution the infant domaine of today can be the superstar of tomorrow. The core of the book comprises about a hundred producer profiles. Many fine domaines and négociants whose wines I am happy to purchase and drink have not found a place here. It is important to stress that they have not been included, rather than excluded, simply for reasons of space. The aim was to feature a representative collection of producers, not a top-down selection of the most celebrated names in descending order of renown. As a consequence this book is not, nor was it ever intended to be, a comprehensive A to Z of producers. I write as an amateur du vin, an enthusiast whose admiration for the wines of Burgundy stretches back over four decades, and who has been visiting the region and writing about the wines for some thirty years. I do not trade in wine. I try to see beyond the wine to get something of the backstory, the story of people and place that makes the Côte d’Or so fascinating. To examine the wines in isolation is to dislocate them from that, and not knowing something of the backstory precludes a full understanding of them. A broad lens must be brought to bear on the côte. Too narrow, and the wood will never be seen for the trees. I have learned much by coming across things serendipitously rather than dashing hither and thither, seeing a lot but noticing little. Without time for assimilation and reflection, subtlety and shade are missed. Finally, no gustatory experience can match the thrill of a great Côte d’Or red drunk at its peak. The colour, crimsoned by age; the heavenly scent, perfumed with notes of sweet decay; a sauvage edge, the palate lively and tingling, managing to be so many things at once, oscillating between fruit and spice and meat and game, a merry-go-round of flavour, spiralling on the palate, refusing to be pinned down by anything so prosaic as a tasting note. All the primary components melded by age and yielding up new ones, unsignalled when the wine was young. Everything cohesive and in harmony, like a great orchestra playing at its best. Above all, vital and living, endlessly enchanting and intriguing, engaging the palate and the spirit like no other wine. Learn more about Raymond Blake's Côte d'Or (2nd edition) Shop all books from the Académie du Vin Library Visit the Académie du Vin website Upcoming Event FINE+RARE & Académie du Vin Present: The Impossible Tasting FINE+RARE and Académie du Vin are delighted to present a rare and intimate exploration of the finest wines ever made. Wines of historical legend. Wines that are rarely seen, much less opened. Wines that should be impossible to bring together at one time. Lunch (April 29): River Restaurant, The Savoy Hotel Dinner (April 30): St James’s Room, 67 Pall Mall Club Learn more about the event here

Explore Burgundy with the introduction from Raymond Blake's book: Côte d'Or: The wines and winemakers of the heart of Burgundy. Blake tells the whole story of this hugely influential region, painting a complete picture of life there: the history, landscape, climate, culture and people.

Discover Raymond Blake's Côte d'Or (2nd Edition): a deep dive into Burgundy's wines, winemakers, history, culture and the people behind this iconic region.

Raymond Blake on the Côte d'Or

I. Distractions In 1987, when I was 18 and a dollar was worth more than twice as much as it is today, I started reading magazines: M, Esquire, GQ. Nearby, in our somewhat cultured Texas town, a new bookstore opened in a cavernous space that had formerly housed the shag-carpeted roller skating rink of our childhood. Through the front windows, which had before been darkly tinted to give the place an alluring den-of-prepubescent-iniquity vibe, now streamed bright, clean light, showcasing a look and layout that would become the interior design gestalt of today’s national-chain, big-box book superstore. The rows upon rows of open, dustless shelving bearing a veritable warehouse of volumes; the ceiling hung with its industrial innards on display; the enfilade of check-out cubicles; and the wall – the great wall – that displayed a preposterous-to-behold assortment of glossies, quarterlies, journals, newsweeklies, fanzines, tabloids, almanacs, and all other flora and fauna of magazines arrayed upon a rack perhaps 50 feet long.  I went in there to look for a book. I liked books, and, one day, I was sure I wanted to write one. But I got distracted and bought a magazine instead – that August’s issue of GQ, which still stands out in my mind as a thing of formative significance. At that time, the zeitgeist was defined by a Walkman-wearing version of the American Renaissance Man – the highly-ambitious, status-obsessed, money-motivated, health-nut known as a Yuppie. No magazine positioned itself more authoritatively in defining this new sociological creature’s lifestyle than GQ, and it did it with whiter teeth, snappier suspenders, better accessories, bigger polka dots and more caffeine in the ink of its display copy.  I remember that issue less for the photos by Richard Avedon or Steven Meisel, the words of Martin Amis or Frederick Exley, than for this: Erzeugerabfüllung. It was one of the longest, strangest strings of letters from the Roman alphabet I had ever seen. Neither did it seem designed to come out of someone’s mouth. But there it was in Alan Richman’s Wine & Spirits column, accompanied by a lovely still-life photograph of his topic: two bottles of Riesling Kabinetts on a white, sun-dappled tablecloth. Richman’s main point – made almost 35 years ago – still holds true: estate-bottled, table-quality German wines remain some of the least expensive, most delicious wines in the world, chiefly because – then as now – the labels, as he wrote, “cannot be understood by anyone who is not a part-time oenophile, linguist and cartographer”. One US dollar in Richman’s pocket, as I have already said, bought what roughly two-dollars-and-fifty-cents does today; what he was on the hunt for was a good dry white in a range that would now cost somewhere between 12 and 30 bucks, and he easily accomplished that by finding a dealer in New York City who carried a good selection of wines from the Mosel and Rheingau. At the time, I didn’t know the meaning or significance of any of this, but it staked a claim in my brain. The only wine I had ever tasted was the one served at our Episcopal church during Eucharist on Sundays. The flavour it had was of a strange, super-concentrated jam that somehow warmed your upper body. Even as a young kid, I liked it. But the adjectives these German bottles were squeezing out of Richman – “citrus-like”, “honeyed”, “tart-sweet” – weren’t close to describing what was in that chalice, even if you believed in transubstantiation. Was it because Richman’s wine was white, and the parish’s was red? Perhaps, but both colours of grape juice bottled by Welch’s tasted pretty much the same to me. No, I sensed there was something – a lot – I had to learn, and, along with the romance and beauty of the labels, and the contextual air of well-bred taste and cultural with-it-ness featured on the other pages, this, I feel sure, was the decisive moment, the true origin point, when I came to believe that among the many extraordinary things that make life worth living, not just words but wine reigns at the top.  I warned you about distractions, didn’t I? Because that would be my excuse for now informing you, as a quite apropos footnote, that, yes, there was something unusual about our church’s Communion wine. It was, as I have confirmed with the church, actually port (Taylor’s Tawny, to be more accurate), cut, according to tradition, with water. There is a good and fascinating reason for this. In 1701, when the War of the Spanish Succession kicked off, France also became an enemy of England, and its wines, as a result, were no longer made available for import. The Anglican Church searched for and found a replacement, the fortified wines of its new ally, Portugal, and port continues to be an acceptable option to pair with the Host.  II. Distillations A satisfying story, not unlike a satisfying life, is one that surprises you with the mystery of its unfolding. A thing pulls in a certain direction long enough to reach the proximity of something else which then turns toward a new destination. I had actually gone into that bookstore, as I said, to look at books. But I came out, even though I didn’t yet know it, with a different compass point. Within a few years, shortly after graduating from college, in 1992, I got hired by The New Yorker, where I stayed for almost nine years. I then met my future wife, who wisely laughed at the thought we might be able to survive in New York City on my meagre salary, so I went to Vogue, and soon after became the founding editor of Men’s Vogue. After 23 issues, and four years, the financial crisis laid an axe to many magazines, including that one. Eventually, I took on the editorship of Town & Country. Then, finally, in 2016, I moved up to Esquire, the magazine, as it happens, that didn’t offer me a job when The New Yorker did, and became that storied magazine’s editor in chief, until – well, you best read about that in The New York Times.  As far as distractions go, magazines were a good one. They made me who I am, gave me a tremendously worldly education, honed my taste, introduced me to all manner of accomplished people, required me to build quite a wardrobe, and paid me pretty well to do all of this, often with a glass of wine not far out of the picture. There was really no other way I would have ever got to taste all the bottles I have (a lot of the big names people whisper about from Burgundy and Bordeaux, Champagne and also Piedmont, Tuscany and Napa). I built a modest cave à vin of my own by buying the Smith Haut Lafittes of the world way before hedge-fund hoi polloi ran up the prices, and by having access to rare offerings, like 12 bottles of Fiorano, the legendary white wine Alberico Boncompagni Ludovisi, prince of Venosa, made before ripping out all his vines. I smelled the musty perfume of Margaux in the cellar as I watched the workers rack the wine by candlelight. I lured Jay McInerney away from the Wall Street Journal to become my wine columnist; and I once stood in Bordeaux’s town square, tight on 2002 Pétrus, trying with great focus to commune with the statue of Michel de Montaigne while my French friend, a true oenophile, extolled the majesty of the Big Mac’s special sauce.  As the editor of a magazine, curiosity is your profession, even to the point of distraction. Editors – writers, too – are prone to it. It’s a hazard of the gift, and having a jumble of ideas, if you’re any good, is key to making a magazine of any real intellectual or creative daring. Now as a husband and father of three, working from home and trying to be ‘present’, and a still youngish former editor and occasional micro-influencer trying to stave off the solitude to fathom and plot the next phase of a fruitful future, this skill of mine, the strength of which became even more magnified over two decades, is something of a family project.  The way I most often hear the word ‘distraction’ now, for instance, is when it’s being hurled at me in verb form by my wife or daughters accusing me of being more of a phone-enslaved screen vegetable than they are. (I respectfully disagree.) But it’s a sore point for two reasons. One, what I did as an editor is, in a nutshell, now what a smartphone essentially does. Not very imaginatively, of course, and not with taste or charm or originality, but with a bloody, money-grubbing ruthlessness that stalks every step of our digital peregrinations and doesn’t give a twist if the algorithms that are its brain make us its slave by retrofitting our attention spans for kindergarten.  The smartphone – not the former me or any of my fellow kind still in the media biz – is now the true croupier of culture, dealing out a targeted shuffle of Pavlovian temptations to the point of daily mental exhaustion. And, though this thing is in many ways my personal nemesis, I am, against every fibre of my being, too often its obedient servant. Aiming not to live according to the famous line by T.S. Eliot – “distracted from distraction by distraction” – I recently decided to at least take a serious inventory of my favourite ones, both those of the pre-digital sort (tennis, The Walking Dead, checking the mailbox, my sock collection) and those of the post-digital sort (the any and everything I do because my phone wants me to). Then I caught myself watching tennis on my phone and realised this might be harder than I thought. It’s enough to drive a person to drink, thank god! With that in mind, I like to keep a special something for the occasion around, in this case – what else? – two bottles of Riesling Kabinett, for it had struck me as more than a little weird that I’ve probably tasted fewer than a handful of German wines in my entire life. Part of the reason is that those I had were bad, and, like a lot of other simpletons about this great wine region of the world, I’d come to think of Riesling as a cloying elixir equal parts green Jolly Rancher, apple cider vinegar, and hairspray. This, I knew, was wrong, not true and, in terms of wine equity and inclusion, on the wrong side of history. But, if you happen to live in a place like I do – a bourgie swathe of Connecticut bordering New York City where the shops cater heavily to Cali-Fran-Taly banker’s tastes – it might take you a few stops to find what Richman recommended, an erzeugerabfüllung (estate-bottled) Kabinett (wine made from grapes with a minimum must weight/sugar content) Riesling, and when you do it will probably be coated in a fine sift of years-old dust. I bought a green (Mosel) bottle for US$16 and a brown (Rhine) bottle for US$20, both handsomely labelled. I opened them a few minutes ago and took several investigative swigs. The words bright, invigorating and snappy came to mind. One is indeed sweeter, and, though not my usual jam, it is tamped by a pleasing peachy tartness, and the classic overtone of honey isn’t making my palate feel doused with syrup. The other example is, as Richman said so long ago, a very finely layered creature with mineral clarity and an echo of baked bread, something a gluten-free person like me finds particularly appealing. A rather obvious thought: why haven’t I been buying this instead of throwing a ton of endless money at affordably bad white Burgundy, which is mostly a product aimed at fulfilling a desired outcome, like White Claw hard seltzer? III. Words But don’t let me get distracted, again. A writer really has to be careful about such things. Just think about it. Unlike, say, a painter or musician or actor or photographer, the process of writing requires zero physical exertion, no chance to score an endorphin release while sitting staring anxiously at a blank page. Of the many things in life that vie against the counter intuitive impulse to be glued to a desk, Cyril Connolly, in Enemies of Promise, his classic study of the things that distracted him (and others) from becoming a great writer, names the temptations but does not say much about why they’re so deeply tempting to someone who would otherwise be sitting alone in an empty room. Praise, money, fame, social prominence, affairs and journalism are the most common boltholes, according to Connolly, who, as a famously late sleeper that married three times, might have also added the bliss of unconsciousness and excessive alimony. In 1938, the year the book was published, he would never have imagined how hard the task might get without a cigarette. Smoking is a death wish, I know, but when you want to off yourself for still having a hundred pages to go, being able to snap open a nice lighter, flick some ash, stub a butt and inhale some lungfuls of focus-enhancing nicotine must have been kind of helpful. Connolly also doesn’t have much to say about drink except that artists who drink to excess do so “out of the consciousness of wasted ability”. According to that, the 20th century’s most famous literary alcoholics – Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Styron, Elizabeth Bishop, James Joyce, Raymond Chandler, William Faulkner – might have left behind even greater treasures than they did. Because Ernest Hemingway did almost everything with more gusto than any of his peers, including running up his bar tab, as a drinker he belongs in his own sentence. He is the novelist who most romanced a good drink or nice bottle of wine as one of life’s great pleasures. Who didn’t want to have a vermouth with Jake when reading The Sun Also Rises? (Don’t, it’s gross, at least if you order it at one of those kiosks in Montmartre where the bottles are hung upside down with spring-loaded dispensers.) Or, track down a bottle of Valdepeñas, Hemingway’s favourite variety of Spanish wine. Or, get a drink at the bar named after him at the Ritz, in Paris, and then go somewhere on the Left Bank to order “a dozen portugaises and a half-carafe of the dry white wine”.  In the early work, he is not boastful about drinking so much as he is the possessor of an unusual appetite for a good buzz. He is also, like Connolly, aware of the need to keep writing separate from drinking, and drinking within his control. It is hard to read the first paragraph of A Moveable Feast, in which he describes an “evilly run café where the drunkards of the quarter crowded together and I kept away from it because of the smell of dirty bodies and the sour smell of drunkenness”, except as a kind of terrifying admonition to himself. It is tragic that he didn’t heed his own advice. Late in his life, Hemingway became fond of rum daiquiris at the Floridita, his favourite bar in Havana, which might explain his taste for a prose style that soon became too often cloying self-parody. In one of the most extraordinary drinking sessions ever committed to words, in the roman à clef Across the River and Into the Trees, a 50-year-old Hemingway, who was smitten with a teenage Italian countess from Venice, fictionalises his infatuation with a last muse. In one stretch (that covers an evening-to-dawn crawl from Harry’s Bar, the grill at the Gritti Palace, a gondola and a hotel room), one half or another of the couple imbibes: one scotch whisky and soda; six Montgomery Martinis (15 parts gin; 1 part vermouth), two of which are described in size as ‘super’; a bottle of Capri Bianco; two bottles of Valpolicella; two bottles of Roederer Brut ’42; and two bottles of Perrier-Jouët. That is, I suppose, one extreme, and, clearly, not one to be tried at home.  The other might have been espoused by Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great critic and lexicographer. As a young man, he’d drained “many a bottle of wine” but loved port especially. (Perhaps Johnson, a devout Anglican who was born in 1709, in the midst of England’s 14-year war with Spain, also first encountered port as a boy at the Communion altar.) He describes himself to friend and biographer James Boswell as having been “apt to go to excess in it”, adding that, “therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it”.  Boswell, who worried about his own dependence on alcohol, even keeping a journal of his intake in an attempt to enforce moderation, argued for a third way, which some of the Romantics later adopted. Wine, he claimed, “produces truth; in vino veritas”. Hoping to persuade Johnson of his point, Boswell once convinced the critic to come down off the wagon for just one glass of claret, so Johnson “might judge, not from recollection, which might be dim, but from immediate sensation”. Boswell reports what happened after the glass was emptied: “Johnson shook his head, and said, ‘Poor stuff! No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men,’” adding, “‘A man would be drowned by it before it made him drunk.’”  That actually reminds me of something I think I forgot to mention about Riesling Kabinetts – they’re also highly admired for their low percentage of alcohol. On that note, I think I’ll have another glass.  This article was originally published in FONDATA, Issue Two.

Jay Fielden, former editor of Men’s Vogue, Town & Country and Esquire, recalls how a magazine column on wine, read in a Texas bookstore, shifted his ambitions beyond journalism and set him on the path to becoming a writer of books.

Former Esquire editor-in-chief Jay Fielden reflects on magazines, writing, Riesling Kabinett and the distractions that shaped a life in words and wine.

Jay Fielden on Wine, Words and Distraction

How one became another  

After the difficult conditions of 2024, Bordeaux has delivered a vintage that has surprised almost everyone. The 2025 growing season was among the hottest and driest of recent decades, with yields collapsing across much of the region. Yet rather than producing another 2022-style vintage of power and opulence, the wines have emerged with freshness, moderate alcohols and remarkable aromatic precision. Almost every major critic references the same paradox: a year that looked destined to produce massive wines instead yielded bottles of energy, balance and finesse. There is less agreement on where 2025 ultimately sits among Bordeaux's recent great vintages. Some critics compare it to 2016, others to 2019, 2020 or even 1961. What they largely agree on, however, is that the best wines are outstanding – and that this is a vintage where terroir, vineyard management and winemaking decisions matter enormously. William Kelley – Wine Advocate William Kelley sees 2025 as a vintage that reveals rather than conceals. He describes it as a "clarifier" rather than an amplifier, arguing that the wines expose differences in terroir, viticulture and winemaking with unusual transparency. Although the growing season was dominated by heat and drought, Kelley believes the resulting wines are fundamentally different from 2022. Cooler nights, lower alcohols and timely late-season rain produced wines that combine concentration, ripeness and freshness in a way that feels distinctive. He repeatedly returns to the notion that the best 2025s are classically proportioned despite their intensity. Unlike some critics, Kelley is reluctant to identify a single winning appellation. Instead, he sees success as highly estate-specific, with the finest wines distinguished by balance, precision and restraint rather than sheer power. Kelley's highlights: Larcis Ducasse, Jean Faure, Sociando-Mallet, Quinault l'Enclos, Le Pin Beausoleil Explore Kelley's full report, notes and scores on Wine Advocate (subscribers only). Jane Anson – Inside Bordeaux For Jane Anson, 2025 is "the paradox vintage". The best wines are immensely impressive, but she cautions strongly against broad-brush conclusions. Anson places the vintage comfortably ahead of 2017, 2021 and 2024, and broadly alongside 2015 and 2019 in terms of potential. Yet she repeatedly notes that this is not a year where collectors can buy indiscriminately. Low pH levels, high acidity and significant tannic structure mean some wines will require patience, while others may never fully resolve. She sees the strongest performances coming from Bordeaux's great water-regulating terroirs, particularly the limestone and clay soils of Saint-Émilion and the best parts of the Left Bank. Pomerol is more variable, with dramatic differences depending on soil type and water retention. Anson's wine of the vintage is Beauséjour Duffau-Lagarrosse, while Canon, Petrus, Cheval Blanc and Château Margaux all feature prominently among her highest-rated wines. Anson's highlights: Ch. Haut Bailly, Mouton Rothschild, Margaux, Smith Haut Lafitte, Leoville Las Cases, Petrus, Beauséjour, Vieux Château Certan, Lafleur,  Tertre Roteboeuf, Haut-Brion Blanc, Les Champs Libres, Doisy-Daëne,  Aile d'Argent Blanc, Pavillon Blanc Read Jane Anson’s report on the Left Bank, Right Bank and white wine on Inside Bordeaux (subscribers only). Antonio Galloni – Vinous Antonio Galloni is one of the most enthusiastic commentators on the vintage, describing the finest wines as "nothing short of thrilling". What impresses him most is the combination of concentration and freshness. The summer heat delivered tiny berries and naturally low yields, yet many wines finished with surprisingly moderate alcohol levels and striking aromatic lift. Galloni believes modern viticulture played a critical role, allowing producers to navigate extreme conditions more successfully than would have been possible a generation ago. He identifies Margaux as the appellation of the vintage and describes Pauillac as "jam-packed with great wines". Saint-Émilion's clay-limestone plateau also impressed him enormously. Pomerol, meanwhile, is the region he found most inconsistent. Galloni also highlights several lesser-known estates that he believes overperformed in 2025, noting that some of the vintage's most exciting discoveries may come outside Bordeaux's traditional elite. Galloni's highlights: Beau-Séjour Bécot, Canon, La Gaffelière, Troplong Mondot, La Mission Haut-Brion, L'If, Margaux, Lafite Rothschild Explore Antonio Galloni's full report, notes and scores on Vinous (subscribers only). Neal Martin – Vinous Neal Martin describes 2025 as a vintage that constantly defies expectations. He argues that the late-August rain fundamentally changed the trajectory of the year, turning what appeared destined to become another 2022 into something altogether more nuanced. Martin calls it "a dialled-down and more precise 2010", a comparison that appears repeatedly throughout his report. He finds concentration and structure, but also freshness, restraint and remarkable aromatic detail. Like Galloni, he is highly enthusiastic about the Left Bank, particularly Pauillac, Saint-Julien and Saint-Estèphe. He also believes several of the greatest successes come from Saint-Émilion's limestone soils, while Pomerol shows more variation than many neighbouring appellations. Perhaps most notably, Martin sees 2025 as one of the strongest recent vintages for Sauternes, praising the purity and freshness of the best sweet wines. Martin's highlights: Montrose, Haut-Brion, Lafite Rothschild, Lafleur, Petrus, Latour Explore Neal Martin's full report, notes and scores on Vinous (subscribers only). James Suckling James Suckling describes 2025 as one of the most exciting Bordeaux vintages he has encountered in more than forty years of tasting barrel samples. He repeatedly returns to the contrast between expectation and reality. On paper, the growing season suggested another powerful, solar vintage. Instead, he found wines with what he calls "unique purity and tension", combining moderate alcohol, vibrant acidity and impressive concentration. For Suckling, 2025 is above all "a great vintage for great terroir". He argues that the region's finest vineyards adapted brilliantly to the challenges of the year, producing wines that are both intensely expressive and remarkably balanced. Although he acknowledges inconsistency across the region, he believes the best wines can stand alongside Bordeaux's leading modern vintages. Suckling's highlights: Château Margaux, Mouton Rothschild, Lafite Rothschild, Petrus, Le Pin, Ausone, Angélus, Les Carmes Haut-Brion Read part one and two of James Suckling’s report, along with his full notes and scores on JamesSuckling.com (subscribers only). Georgie Hindle – Decanter Georgie Hindle describes 2025 as both "paradoxical" and "miraculous", two words that neatly capture the mood of many critics tasting the vintage. She notes that almost everything about the growing season pointed towards a rich, powerful vintage. Yet the wines themselves display freshness, poise and balance rather than opulence. The crucial turning point, in her view, was the late-August rain that arrived after months of drought and completely reshaped the vintage's trajectory. Hindle argues that terroir and winemaking decisions were decisive. Producers who adapted extraction techniques and handled the naturally high tannin levels carefully were rewarded with wines of precision and elegance. Others were less successful. While she believes the best wines are exceptional, she is clear that 2025 lacks the broad consistency of 2022 and should be approached selectively. Hindle's highlights: Beauséjour, Cheval Blanc, Haut-Bailly, Haut-Brion, Margaux, Mouton Rothschild, Petrus, Vieux Château Certan Explore Georgie Hindle's coverage on Decanter (subscribers only). Jeb Dunnuck Jeb Dunnuck compares 2025 to a modern-day version of 1961, citing tiny yields, drought conditions and extraordinary concentration. Yet unlike the blockbuster vintages often associated with hot years, Dunnuck finds the wines surprisingly fresh and elegant. He repeatedly highlights the role of cooler nights and late-season rainfall in preserving balance and preventing overripeness. He sees Saint-Émilion as one of the stars of the vintage, while also praising the best wines of Pauillac, Saint-Julien and Pomerol. Like several critics, he believes value-conscious collectors should look closely at Castillon and Fronsac, where some producers delivered outstanding quality relative to price. Dunnuck's highlights: Margaux, Haut-Brion, Léoville Las Cases, Montrose, Le Pin, Ducru-Beaucaillou, Mouton Rothschild, Petrus, Figeac, Beauséjour Explore Jeb Dunnuck's full report, notes and scores on JebDunnuck.com (subscribers only). James Lawther MW – Jancis Robinson James Lawther sees 2025 as one of Bordeaux's most pleasant surprises. He notes that despite being one of the hottest vintages of the last thirty years, the wines possess freshness, moderate alcohol levels and considerable charm. The defining feature for Lawther is the combination of power and approachability — wines that have both concentration and an almost unexpected amiability. Cabernet Sauvignon particularly impressed him, especially in Pauillac and Saint-Estèphe, while Saint-Émilion's limestone-rich soils again proved highly resilient in drought conditions. Pomerol was less straightforward, producing some brilliant wines alongside more uneven results. Lawther is also highly positive about Sauternes, which he considers one of the vintage's major success stories. Lawther's highlights: Palmer, Pavie, Suduiraut, Mouton Rothschild, Cheval Blanc Explore James Lawther MW's full reports, notes and scores on JancisRobinson.com (subscribers only). Read James Lawther MW’s report on the Left Bank, Right Bank and white wine on Inside Bordeaux (subscribers only). Explore Bordeaux 2025

As the Bordeaux 2025 campaign draws to a close, we review the critics' verdicts on one of the decade's most intriguing vintages and the wines that emerged as their standout performers.

Your essential crib-sheet to what the world’s leading wine critics are saying about Bordeaux 2025 en primeur–including Wine Advocate, Vinous and more

Bordeaux 2025 en primeur – what the critics are saying 

Bordeaux 2025: what the critics are saying

Douro Wine Shippers and Grower

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Fondi insufficienti

Questa transazione è stata bloccata dal fornitore di pagamenti per possibile attività fraudolenta.

Transazione bloccata

Scegli un metodo di pagamento diverso e riprova.

Errore sconosciuto

mostra tutti gli articoli che attualmente conservi con noi. Questi articoli possono essere venduti, consegnati o trasferiti.

Presso {shortName}

La tua allocazione verrà annullata. Sei sicuro di voler continuare?

Il tuo articolo pre-ordinato verrà eliminato. Sei sicuro di voler continuare?

La tua richiesta di consegna verrà annullata. Sei sicuro di voler procedere?

rappresenta tutti i vini che sono in tuo possesso e che sono stati consumati.

Questo è il prezzo che hai pagato per questo articolo.

Prezzo di costo

Dopo aver aggiunto il nuovo indirizzo, verrai reindirizzato a questa pagina.

Crea un nuovo indirizzo

La tua notifica verrà eliminata. Sei sicuro di voler continuare?

Il prezzo minimo al quale sei disposto a vendere. Se il prezzo di listino scende al di sotto di questo valore, la tua inserzione verrà rimossa.

mostra tutti gli articoli che hai pre-ordinato, inclusi i vini en primeur, e tutti gli articoli nella tua watchlist.

Futures

È possibile impostare un prezzo minimo per gli articoli in vendita basato su una percentuale del valore netto unitario attuale.

Puoi impostare un prezzo di mercato per gli articoli che stai vendendo basato su una percentuale del valore netto unitario corrente.

mostra tutte le azioni che hai effettuato sugli articoli nel tuo Portafoglio.

raggruppa ogni azione per tipo - Acquisto, Vendita, Consegna e Trasferimento in entrata - così è chiaro a colpo d'occhio cosa è successo a ciascun articolo.

Storico

mostra tutti gli articoli attualmente in transito da o verso {shortName}.

In transito

La consegna locale è gratuita per ordini superiori a 1.800 HK$ (in un'unica destinazione). Per ordini inferiori a questo importo, la consegna costa 150 HK$ fino a quattro casse e 50 HK$ per ogni cassa aggiuntiva.

Le spedizioni partono da €15 in Italia e da €45 verso la Svizzera e il resto d’Europa per un massimo di 48 bottiglie (75 cl). I costi variano in base alla destinazione. Per spedizioni più grandi è possibile richiedere un preventivo.

La data indicata di seguito è quella in cui il tuo ordine verrà spedito dal nostro magazzino locale. La data di consegna finale, insieme ai dettagli completi di tracciamento, ti verrà fornita una volta che il nostro team avrà elaborato la tua richiesta.

Puoi organizzare il ritiro presso il nostro negozio al 22° piano, 8 Wyndham Street, Central Hong Kong.
Gli orari di ritiro sono dalle 9:30 alle 18:00, da lunedì a venerdì.

Puoi organizzare il ritiro presso il nostro magazzino STI INTERNAZIONALE SPA, in Viale del Lavoro 57, 37051 Bovolone, Verona.
Gli orari di ritiro sono dalle 8:30 alle 12:30 e dalle 13:30 alle 17:30, dal lunedì al venerdì. Siamo chiusi nei giorni festivi.

Questo è il valore di mercato stimato attuale per questo articolo.

I prezzi impostati manualmente verranno sovrascritti. I vini già inseriti non sono interessati.

Aggiorna tutti i vini non inseriti al prezzo di mercato corrente.

Imposta tutto al prezzo di mercato

rappresenta tutti i vini attualmente presenti nel tuo Portafoglio che non sono conservati con noi. Premi l'icona

La mia cantina

Nome

Prezzo netto

Nuovo portafoglio disponibile

Nuovo portafoglio

Non hai alcuna fattura in questo momento.

mostra tutti gli articoli del tuo Portafoglio che sono attualmente sul mercato.

In vendita

mostra tutti gli articoli attualmente presenti nel tuo Portafoglio. Da questa pagina puoi eseguire azioni individuali su di essi.

Panoramica

mostra tutti gli articoli attualmente in attesa di un'azione da parte dell'utente.

In sospeso

Questo è il prezzo di mercato dinamico dell'articolo al netto del margine di negoziazione.

Questo è l'importo del profitto che riceverai se la tua inserzione verrà venduta.

I pagamenti pre-autorizzati consentono transazioni automatiche per tuo conto, garantendo pagamenti fluidi e senza complicazioni. Questo permette di elaborare addebiti ricorrenti, abbonamenti o pagamenti programmati senza approvazione manuale ogni volta.

Il numero di casse che desideri mettere in vendita

Il tuo articolo del catalogo verrà archiviato. Sei sicuro di voler continuare?

I tuoi articoli del catalogo verranno archiviati. Sei sicuro di voler continuare?

Prima di richiedere la consegna, puoi modificare la quantità per ciascun articolo nella tua selezione qui sotto.

*Il prezzo di mercato è dinamico e può variare. Al momento della vendita, dal prezzo finale sarà detratta una commissione di negoziazione del 10%.

Prezzo di mercato totale*

Il prezzo fisso personalizzato al quale desideri vendere ciascun articolo.

Dividi in {caseSize} singole bottiglie da {bottleSize}cl.

Titolo

mostra tutti gli articoli che attualmente conservi con noi. Questi articoli possono essere venduti.

Disponibili per la vendita — gli articoli conservati con {name} sono idonei per essere inseriti nel marketplace.

Profilo

Questo articolo si trova presso FINE+RARE.

Questo articolo si trova presso FINE+RARE HOME Hong Kong, ed è disponibile per la consegna o il ritiro in sede. La maggior parte delle consegne a Hong Kong può essere effettuata entro 3 giorni lavorativi; la data esatta sarà comunicata al momento dell'organizzazione della consegna. Le consegne internazionali richiedono tempi più lunghi, ti preghiamo di contattarci per maggiori dettagli.

I vini venduti en primeur saranno rilasciati dal produttore dopo limbottigliamento, tipicamente 18 mesi dopo la fine della cosiddetta campagna. Il tuo vino sarà poi conservato da FINE+RARE in un deposito doganale fino a quando deciderai di richiederne la consegna.

Ci riforniremo di questo articolo al prezzo garantito dalla nostra rete di fornitori e organizzeremo una spedizione rapida a FINE+RARE.
 I tempi di consegna dipendono da molte variabili, ma in genere per un approvvigionamento rapido sono 2-4 settimane.
 Una volta confermato l'ordine, ti terremo aggiornato sulla data di arrivo prevista.
 Ogni articolo viene controllato all'arrivo dal nostro team di esperti e le fotografie sono disponibili su richiesta (si prega di notare che potrebbero essere applicati dei costi).

Reperiremo questo articolo attraverso la nostra rete di fornitori e ne organizzeremo la spedizione a FINE+RARE.
 I tempi di consegna dipendono da molte variabili, ma una stima media è di 6-12 settimane.
 Una volta confermato lordine, ti terremo aggiornato sulla data di arrivo prevista.
 Ogni articolo viene controllato al momento della ricezione dal nostro team di esperti, con fotografie disponibili su richiesta (si prega di notare che potrebbero essere applicati dei costi).

Douro Wine Shippers and Grower

Filtro

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