2019 revisited Bordeaux in bottle

After tasting more than 800 newly bottled 2019 wines, Decanter’s Bordeaux correspondent is full of praise for the vintage’s consistent and expressive wines, with successes on both Left and Right Bank

- GEORGINA HINDLE

Despite Covid-19 severely reducing en primeur tasting opportunities for the 2019 wines, the vintage at the time was rightly hailed as a success. Even now, ongoing restrictions have limited much of the exposure a vintage of this quality might have seen in ordinary circumstances. Fortunately, having been able to taste in situ now that the wines have been bottled, it’s certain this is an excellent and very consistent vintage with some fantastic wines, across both the Left and Right Banks, in all styles.

It comes in the middle of a trilogy, quality-wise, that most winemakers would dream of. Largely defined by their climatic conditions, 2018, 2019 and 2020 forced winemakers to navigate varying degrees of difficult or unwelcome weather episodes: mildew and rot in 2018; uneven rainfall and drought in 2019; and impactful microclimatic patterns (hail, rain and heat) in 2020. Yet each has produced a raft of top-class wines, if you know where to look.

Generally speaking, the 2019 reds seem to sit somewhere in the middle of the exuberant and plush 2018s and the structured and concentrated 2020s. In the best cases they manage the feat of providing power and density alongside elegance and class. You get acidity and juiciness balanced by precision and tension, with many displaying exceptional freshness.

They combine the understated power of 2018 and even 2016 with the attractiveness of 2015, alongside the brightness and classicism of 2017. Distinctive and impressive, 2019 joins 2010, ’15, ’16 and ’18 as one of the best vintages of the decade.

CHANGING FACE