- Jane Anson awarded Château Haut-Brion Blanc her highest score.
- Her four highest-scoring red wines all received 97-points.
- She called 2021 the most difficult vintage since 2013.
Jane Anson is the latest critic to release their scores on the 2021 Bordeaux vintage. She noted that some of the positive reviews of the vintage have compared it favourably to ‘a modern-day 1996 or the graceful 2001’.
‘I hate to break the mood,’ she continued, ‘but the reality is that this vintage was the most challenging in Bordeaux since 2013’.
Although she added that it was a better year overall with ‘some’ very good wines, more generally she felt that ‘you will find more pleasure elsewhere’ and that prices were unlikely to come down enough to ‘justify stocking up widely’.
Haut-Brion Blanc tops the scores
The vintage’s white wines have received praise from other critics and Anson was no different. Haut-Brion’s white wine was her highest scoring wine with 98-points, Anson said it had ‘gorgeous depth from first to last moment’.
Château Margaux’s Pavillon Blanc was rated 97-points and Château La Mission Haut-Brion and Château Mouton Rothschild’s white wines were both rated 96-points, as were Château Valandraud Blanc and Les Champs Libres from Lafleur.
Anson did not give any potential 100-point scores for the 2021s. Her highest scores for the reds was 97-points, which she awarded to just four wines.
She noted that she was not willing to give topmost scores to wines in this vintage as it would render her high scores for vintages such as 2009, 2016 or 2019 ‘meaningless’.
Our Bordeaux En Primeur 2021 page contains everything you need to know about this year’s campaign. You can also sign up for our daily En Primeur email alerts using the form below.
Liv-ex analysis is drawn from the world’s most comprehensive database of fine wine prices. The data reflects the real time activity of Liv-ex’s 560+ merchant members from across the globe. Together they represent the largest pool of liquidity in the world – currently £100m of bids and offers across 16,000 wines. Independent data, direct from the market.
