The enlightened and charming Veronique Sanders of Pessac-Leognan’s Château Haut Bailly described Bordeaux’s 2022 vintage as ‘prophetic’. Many other vignerons also believe that extreme weather conditions during the annual growing season will continue into the future. This outlook has resulted in remarkable investments in new equipment (frost machines particularly), AI technologies and sustainable farming techniques. This challenge is also creating more enlightened thinking. The 2022 vintage season has shown that empathy, inventiveness, environmental responsibility and skill can overcome or mitigate the existential threat of climate change. It could have been a disaster, but it wasn’t. 2022 is a magnificent year reflecting the best of nurture, the natural resilience of vines and the mystery of life. The scientific community, winemakers and vignerons are still reflecting on how such a miracle happened and where the vintage sits in history.

Spring saw a series of black frosts in April, but most vignerons were prepared with their frost machines or frost pots. Early ripening Merlot vines were the most exposed, but Cabernet Sauvignon had not reached budburst and was not impacted. The three heat waves that hit the region in June, July and August worried vignerons who believed that the vines would suffer greatly or die. There was also a feeling that the grapes would become overripe and lose their freshness and aromatic intensity. But these anxieties would later transform into relief and elation.

Although this is not a typical or traditional Bordeaux vintage (whatever that means these days!), the young primeur wines are incredibly beautiful with superb fruit definition, richness of flavour and structure. They have some way to go but the overall definition, balance and structures are very impressive. Olivier Berrouet of Château Petrus aptly described the 2022s as showing ‘lovely density but not being overly saturated’. Ultimately, this was a ‘solar vintage’ with remarkable freshness, unlike the 2003 vintage which suffered from extreme heat and above-average night temperatures. In this respect, 2022 is a great Bordeaux year of extraordinary singularity and may well become one of the legendary vintages of the 21st Century. The hot dry sunny conditions from spring onwards pushed along the growing season at a rapid rate resulting in the earliest harvest ever recorded with the first red wine grapes being gathered in late August. At Château Cheval Blanc in St Emilion, the picking began on the 29th of August and lasted until the 20th of September. Château Lafite on the left bank started harvesting on 31st of August while nearby Château Latour began on 6th September. But both finished on the 24th of September.

Château Lafite reported ‘each of these plots, which we know by heart, reacted differently in the face of adversity. Mamizelle made sparks fly while Caudeyrac got its fingers burnt.’ The high drama of the growing season created great anxieties, but the vineyards proved to be resilient and offered up the most surprising results. The fruit ripened perfectly, and the acidities were sufficient to provide freshness and a mineral backbone. Although some Châteaux considered acidification (a common Australian practice) because of high pH readings in pre-harvest samples, some extra natural acidities were released from the skins during fermentation resulting in wines that completely exceeded expectations. Although the Bordeaux negociants and Château proprietors are prone to talking up the vintage, their descriptions of 2022 being ‘a miracle’ or ‘magnificent’ year resonates.

Although the many châteaux across the sub-regions experienced slightly different circumstances, the overall season was the same with an extraordinary number of sunshine hours during July (349 hrs) and August (348 hrs). This translated to 11 hours/15 minutes of warm full sunlight days and prodigious ripening conditions. Although daytime temperatures were much higher than average, nighttime temperatures were generally cool which undoubtedly promoted the retention of acidities during the grape-ripening period.