Wine critic Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW is the latest to publish her Bordeaux 2022 scores and tasting notes on her website, The Wine Independent. Alongside her ratings comes a detailed report of the vintage, with a focus on different harvesting, sorting, and production methods adopted around the region.
Liv-ex members can now get Lisa Perrotti-Brown scores automatically added to their website with our Critic Data API.
Vintage overview
Perrotti-Brown visited Bordeaux several times including during the harvest in September 2022, when ‘the winemakers haven’t yet prepared their marketing propaganda about the vintage’. As such, she was able to glean unique insights into the harvest and production from several estates.
The critic observed that although the harvest was the earliest ever for many domains including Château Canon, others such as Tertre Roteboeuf waited until the 1st of October. Both of these producers, she writes, ‘went on to produce spectacular wines, meaning there was no one ideal harvest date’.
One thing that was consistent across estates according to Perrotti-Brown was ‘super-gentle extraction’ to avoid potential high alcohol levels. Apart from that, she writes, ‘winemaking techniques across Bordeaux were more varied and even more divisive in 2022 than most other vintages’. This resulted in ‘one of the most heterogeneous vintages in terms of style’ that the critic has ever tasted.
Overall, Perrotti-Brown concludes, ‘The top wines of the 2022 Bordeaux vintage are bright, multilayered, and luminous. And there are a lot of them. This is a classic, great Bordeaux vintage.’
Buying En Primeur
On the subject of whether to buy wines En Primeur, Perrotti-Brown notes that unless collectors are interested in a particular Château or vintage for emotional reasons, there are a few factors to consider before purchasing 2022 Bordeaux wines En Primeur.
If the wine is particularly unique or unprecedented in quality, from a small or popular property which means it is unlikely to be available once it is bottled, or if there are no other physical vintages to your taste or of better quality, then buying En Primeur should be considered, according to the critic.
Otherwise, she writes, ‘the simple principle of supply and demand tells us that for many of these wines, you can probably wait until they are available in bottle to buy if the price is right by then. If not, there are plenty of other great recent vintages to pick and choose from’.
Lisa Perrotti-Brown’s top-scoring Bordeaux 2022 wines
Lisa Perrotti-Brown found the potential for perfection in ten wines, which she gives a barrel range of 98-100 points. They can be seen in the table below.
NB: Château Latour will not be released En Primeur.
Of Château Cheval Blanc, which was released last week at €470 per bottle ex-négociant, she writes ‘so graceful, so singular, so Cheval.’Château Angélus, also released last week at €350 per bottle ex-négociant, is described as ‘pure magic’.
Liv-ex members on Silver packages and above can now see Lisa Perrotti-Brown’s scores on the Fair Value tool and use them to assess past releases such as Cheval Blanc, Léoville Barton, Angélus and more.
Liv-ex Bordeaux 2022 En Primeur coverage
Liv-ex will be publishing release posts during En Primeur and has a range of tools and insights to help navigate the campaign. Our Bordeaux 2022 page contains links to key prices, critic scores, and reports and release blogs.
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