Neal Martin’s report and scores for Bordeaux 2016 were released on The Wine Advocate today. Martin is full of praise for the vintage, suggesting that, “Even a cynic … must admit that these 2016s live up to expectations and the superlatives [he has] heard consistently over three weeks.”
Martin was particularly impressed by the wines of Saint Estephe – “a fertile hunting ground for wine-lovers”, Pauillac and Saint Julien, favouring the Left slightly above the Right Bank due to “exceptional” Cabernet Sauvignon.
On style, the report points to a move towards a more “fresh, elegant and purer style of Bordeaux than before”. This sentiment is echoed in the note on one of Martin’s potential 100-point wines, Cos d’Estournel: “This is clearly a more classically styled Cos d’Estournel that is completely different than say, the 2009 … and the more flamboyant, exotic wines in recent years.”
Overall, Martin awarded eight potentially ‘perfect’ scores to the wines shown in the table below.
The high score for Cos d’Estournel means that the wine was released at around 40% below ‘fair value‘ as the chart below shows.
Comparing the wines to 2015 Martin says that, “The two vintages are different, but there is no gulf in general quality between them.” Analysis of the 100 wines shown on the Liv-ex critic scores page, however, does suggest a slight gap: Martin’s average score for the 2015s is 93.8;for 2016 it is 94.7.
Next week Liv-ex will post further analysis on the scores, using fair value analysis to calculate suggested prices. To read Neal Martin’s report in full, please click here.
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