My recollection of tasting the 2022s from barrel is patchy; I’m not sure why. I recall a theophany of sorts at Latour, a Grand Puy Lacoste that summed up everything that was the best about both château and vintage and, I think, a whole day spent running 30 minutes late. I don’t do late very well; this may explain the patchy recall.
I do remember what I thought of the vintage: brilliance in parts, a great deal of extract pretty much across the board, and a fair few wines where either a lack of genuine vineyard quality, or a wrong turn or two either in the vineyard or the winery, had produced wines that were a little too much for my palate or, in some cases, were downright wonky. I have/had been looking forward to tasting them in bottle for some time.
The Southwold tasting takes no prisoners. This was my thirteenth and, whilst I no longer have to try quite as hard as I used to, it demands a great deal of focus. The weaker vintages can be hard to taste but easy to judge. The brilliant vintages – 2019 & 2016 for me – are challenging to taste but easier to judge. 2022 was reasonably challenging to taste and, for me, very hard to judge in some cases. This is the caveat to all of this: 2022 is a vintage with a distinct hallmark, and that hallmark is all over some of the wines, writ very large in some cases. I struggled a bit.
Here is what I thought:
St Emilion
Insert usual line about Saint Emilion now better and less forced than it used to be. Well, for the most part that remains the case though this is a vintage that is about heat and sunshine, and heat, sunshine and Merlot don’t always mix.
Clos Fourtet stood out to me – this is surely about vineyard quality – as did Valandraud, so much so that I had to look up where the vineyard actually was afterwards (it’s a few kilometres almost due east of Pavie). I didn’t quite get Tertre Rôteboeuf (which is what more than a few of the group thought Valandraud was). Wine of the appellation for me, and one of my wines of the entire tasting was a quite lovely Belair Monange. The usual suspects – Canon, Figeac, Angélus, Pavie, showed more or less as expected though without the crackle I might have been hoping for. Cheval Blanc was plush and regal and I may have under-scored it. What I find more and more with Cheval Blanc is that I just want to drink it. Lots of it.
Pomerol
Insert usual line about how a lot of Pomerol can taste a bit samey. In 2022 this is very much the case until you get to the top. I could probably have guessed Clinet in that it is so well put-together in that Clinet fashion, and it starts to get rather good with La Fleur Pétrus, but it only really sings with Lafleur and VCC, which were beautiful. The group had Eglise Clinet at the top, and I changed my score on this one more than once, so maybe I just missed it. Pin and Pétrus did what they do, and as they should do for the money, and the group rated the former higher than I did.
Graves
I struggled with these and I think it was the Merlot again maybe. This flight had the mark of the vintage all over it and I found the wines both hard to identify and very much of the same profile; I struggled to taste any particular character to most of the wines. Domaine de Chevalier and Smith Haut Lafitte came out on top for me, which makes sense, though I couldn’t tell which was which, and these two are usually fairly easy to spot. They were joined by Haut Bailly, a wine that doesn’t always show well – it’s just one of those wines that tastes better in isolation rather than in a blind flight of its peers. The rest were all a bit of a blur. Carmes Haut Brion split the room: more than one taster had it at the top; others thought differently. To use one of my favourite posh wine merchant phrases, they “didn’t taste it very well”…
Margaux
I may well have under-scored these though there were some clear winners and I had Rauzan Ségla and a quite brilliant Brane Cantenac at the top, with Palmer just behind. Château Margaux was the outright winner of the entire tasting. Ségla put in its usual strong performance; I can’t think of a better second wine in Bordeaux. Giscours was rather good and I also rather rated Siran. In past tastings I have found frequent and sometimes over-done use of glossy oak in Margaux but found none of this in 2022.
St Julien
This is where it always gets interesting: it’s always the best non-first growth flight, always the most consistent appellation and perhaps the bellwether of any vintage in terms of the wines at the upper echelon. Ducru won the flight both for me (I like Ducru so I wasn’t greatly surprised) and for the panel (this is rare). Lascases was just behind, which is rare on both counts. I recall tasting this from barrel and thinking that it was the best young Lascases I’d ever tasted, and speculating that this had something to do with turning off some of the technology in the winery and letting the vineyards speak. Everything else performed pretty much as expected and – this might be notable – this was the first flight where I identified a couple of wines. My point being that terroir was overcoming the vintage, if that makes sense.
Pauillac
What it’s all about. I may have made my mind up on the vintage by this stage so I was maybe not tasting with total objectivity. Lynch Bages won the flight for the group; it was GPL or the Comtesse for me on the day. This is likely down to Lynch being a bit of a powerhouse, as it frequently is these days, and my palate being a bit knackered. A very impressive Pauillac de Latour bested some wines that in theory are in a higher league; I really do rate this wine no matter what some might say about the price. That said, it was becoming clear that I don’t/didn’t rate this vintage as highly as I had expected to. The occasional fireworks that I was hoping to see just weren’t there. I wasn’t expecting Primrose Hill, Crystal Palace or Lewes, but was rather hoping for the odd cracker from the nutter that lives across the street.
St Estèphe
I had hoped for some magic here; sunshine and heat and St Estèphe generally mix well. But in 2022, or at least the wines as they are at this stage, there is the background tannin – the tannins are IN the fruit as opposed to framing the fruit – throughout and, well.. herewith random extracts from my notes: “scratchy nose … not quite all here … a bit cooked … good but too scratchy … pretty good but no cigar … tight and almost too worked”. The last two notes include “maybe I’m missing something” and “I can’t read these”.
So maybe jury out for the moment on these, though I have to mention Tronquoy, which mixed it and more with the St Estèphe’s grand trio. Indeed a few tasters, myself included, had it right at the top. I’d like to do this flight again.
The big boys
Which is where it all changes a bit. One of my fellow tasters, a man who has bought more Bordeaux than most (and used to buy more than everyone) remarked that these wines out-did their 2019 counterparts. I’m not quite on that page but looking back at my 2019 scores they are more or less level: 2022 at the top is pretty special. Lafite, Mouton, Latour and Margaux were my picks, which makes sense. The group had Margaux as the outright winner and these four, plus Lafleur and VCC, are the cream of this vintage for me. Seriously good wines, maybe level with 2019 though I’m not quite sure, and probably not at the same level as 2016.
Fin
This all needs what I think is quite a long conclusion, and this is my 2p:
2022 isn’t a great vintage in the same way as 2016 or 2019 BUT there are some great wines at the peak. It’s also a vintage that is hard to judge in this format. I am sure that there are wines that, tasted in isolation, blind or otherwise, I may well have scored a point or more higher. And it’s all very well me saying that the vintage is all over the wines, but isn’t that the point? You can say the same about 2009 and 2019, vintages that I consider to be truly great.
It’s maybe like a better version of 2018. And the comparison with 2018 goes a little bit further in that taken in isolation a good bottle of 2018 claret can give a great deal of pleasure, which is rather the point of the whole shebang. Wines like 2018 GPL or similar have you thinking about going to the butchers: they are wines to be enjoyed with good food rather than fuss and, in that context, they are excellent. 2022s might just be the same but better.
The league table
In the past ten years there are two vintages that are the clear leaders, playing in a very small league of their own: 2019 and 2016. In the relegation spots are 2013 – dead and buried – with either 2021 or 2017.
Mid table is trickier. There’s not enough consistency in my book for a clear order. 2022, 2020 and 2018 can all probably beat each other on any given day, then it’s 2014 and 2015. I lean toward the former here, particularly so in the northern Médoc.
Fin fin
I haven’t mentioned my desert island wine, which is Roc de Cambes. A wine so easily identifiable that tasting it blind is borderline pointless. I scored this higher than pretty much everything else on the right bank, level with some serious kit and a notch under the very serious kit. I can’t taste Roc objectively because I love it. What got me thinking, though, was how it reminded me of the 2003 as I recall it. Mr Mitjavile is pretty good at capturing the essence of a vintage, and the significance is only that, when tasting the 2022s from barrel in 2023, one of the standard lines at every property was “no, just because it was insanely hot doesn’t mean it’s another 2003”.
My point being the lines that form and develop, very quickly, in Bordeaux with a new vintage. After a couple of days everyone is saying the same thing. In 2022 it was first: “no, it’s not another 2003“. Then – better: “No, it’s not another 2003; we don’t know why it’s so fresh“. Then – finished article: “we couldn’t work out why they were so good at first but, with the recent run of hot vintages, the vines have adapted, gone deeper. Mother Nature adapts; these wines are Her work“.
Which everyone swallows and I can’t help but feel sometimes that the quality of a vintage, or rather the perception of its quality, is frequently influenced as much by the power of suggestion, followed by a dash of groupthink, as it is anything else.
