“While 2016 is an incredible vintage that produced a lot of outstanding and some extraordinary wines throughout Bordeaux, the greatest wines of this amazing year sing not so much about the vintage, or even their communes, but about their vineyards.”
Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW
The Wine Advocate has just published its much anticipated in-bottle report on the Bordeaux 2016 vintage. For the first time, Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW has officially scored wines from the vintage for the publication.
The Wine Advocate’s 2016 En Primeur report, released at the end of April, was written by Neal Martin, who awarded eight wines a score range of 98-100 points.
Perotti-Brown, on the other hand, awarded eight wines the ultimate 100 points, and another five the almost perfect 99 points. She commented that “2016 is the most consistently great year since 2009 and 2010, both at the top of the market and in terms of good value wines”.
She added that “one of the aspects [she] particularly loves about the vintage is its ability to clearly communicate terroir.” She also said that “2016 is not at all like 2010, as some are comparing it […] it is totally unique – an exciting new chapter for Bordeaux’s greatest vintages.”
On the topic of Left versus Right Bank, Perotti-Brown did not express a preference. For her, the vintage does not favour a side; “it does favour some soils and […] older vines”. Evaluating and summarising 2016 was not necessarily easy. It was about “piecing together the jigsaw puzzle of what accounted for the minor differences that ultimately made all the difference”.
As the table above shows, a number of 100-point wines are currently available at a discount to their release prices. Others, like Petrus and Lafleur, have already made steady gains, rising by 54.5% and 89.9% respectively, for those who were lucky enough to have secured an allocation. We will continue to track the market direction of these recently physical vintages, which, according to Perotti-Brown, are “up a notch from 2015”.
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