Yesterday, Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate released William Kelley’s Bordeaux En Primeur 2024 report (‘Ripeness is All’) along with his and Yohan Castaing’s scores. According to Kelley (The Wine Advocate), the 2024 vintage has yielded not just a small crop, but ‘few compelling wines’. There are, of course, exceptions, but neither Kelley nor Castaing awarded a wine a rating above the 94-96 range. He describes it as the weakest vintage of the past decade, with many of the 2024 reds ‘dilute, herbaceous and tart’.
As detailed in Gavin Quinney’s harvest report, growers were faced with a difficult growing season, marked by heavy rain in two critical growing phases – March-May and September. While producers were gifted a warmer August, this, for many, was not enough to fully ripen their grapes. Rains in September meant that allowing grapes extra time on the vines also provided time for mildew to form, in turn, reducing yields. According to Kelley, ‘some growers, unlucky or under-resourced to meet the challenge, lost their entire production.’
Dry whites faced a similarly harsh critique: ‘with notable exceptions, the white wines share the defects of the reds: incomplete maturity, vegetal aromas, shrill acidity and dilution’.
Kelley was less than optimistic in his projections of this En Primeur campaign’s success, going so far as to call the system a ‘sinking ship’. Though noting that chateaux will be bringing their prices down, he believes this is likely to be met with ‘consumer apathy’.
What were the top scoring wines?
In his report, Kelley states that ‘while some vintages favour a particular variety or appellation, 2024 can only be understood on a producer basis’. Nevertheless, the list is largely populated by Right Bank wines and the more Cabernet Franc / Merlot dominant of the Left Bank.
Cheval Blanc and La Conseillante were Kelley’s top scoring Right Bank wines, both achieving a score of 94-96 points. While receiving his highest ratings, they remain two of the lowest-scored vintages in recent times. Attaining these scores in this difficult vintage was not cheap. Cheval Blanc accepted a loss of 34% of their 39hl/ha yield between sorting and press, while Conseillante produced only ‘22 hl/ha after extensive sorting’.
On the Left Bank, only Pontet-Canet achieved this top score. Kelley attributes some of the chateau’s success to their risky decision to delay harvest until late September / early October – a necessity for Cabernet Sauvignon dominant wines.
Yohan Castaing awarded his best score – 93-96 points – to just one wine, Les Carmes Haut-Brion. According to Castaing, its success was ‘thanks in no small part to meticulous vineyard work and severe sorting in the winery’. The Carmes yield fell from 50hl/ha for the 2023 to 25 hl/ha.
