On Thursday, Neal Martin (Vinous) published his Bordeaux En Primeur 2024 report — ‘Event Horizon’ — alongside his scores and tasting notes.
Opening his report with a (sci-fi themed) satire, Martin drew attention to the disconnect between chateaux and private collectors — ‘there remains a gap between consumers’ expectations on price and chateaux’s willingness to discount to that point’. No longer can private collectors ‘sever’ the memories of losing on previous En Primeur purchases.
Martin’s ‘default response’ to questions on the general quality of the 2024 vintage is that it is ‘good with limitations’. While ‘this is a year where quality resides with those in the possession of the best terroir, those with the deepest pockets and those who made the right decisions at the right times… Mother Nature put a cap on the maximum quality achievable’. The ‘maleficent’ growing season, according to Martin widened ‘the divide between the haves and have-nots’. Here, he echoes the thoughts of several other critics (Antonio Galloni, Jane Anson and William Kelley amongst them) — ‘2024 is an inconsistent vintage’.
Luckily, ‘thanks to technology, know-how and more quality driven producers’ the 2024s suffered less than vintages such as ‘1984, 1992 or 2013’. There are successes in this vintage. Like Anson, Martin remarks that the vintage favoured dry whites over reds.
Our analysis of his scores (considering the 67 of the wines we cover during En Primeur for which there was a full set of scores), puts his average for the 2024s at 92.6 — a good clip higher than his average of 88.5 for the 2013s. He is the first of critics we have covered with a (albeit slightly) higher average score for the 2024s than the 2014s.
The reds, he sums up as ‘pretty’, clarifying that this descriptor is not a bad thing. According to Martin, ‘the aromatics are rarely powerful, yet frequently delineated and focused, new oak dialled down a notch so that the cooperage doesn’t speak over the fruit. They are balanced. The spine of acidity lends poise’.
Martin closes his report with a call for change to the En Primeur system. 2024, he says, is the ‘ideal vintage for a reset’. He is not alone in his belief, as the title of the Liv-ex Opening Report, ‘A Factory Reset?’, suggests. He asks chateaux to ‘appease the requirements of [Bordeaux drinkers] above all —what they are willing to pay for what remains one of the greatest wines in the world’.
What were his top-scoring wines?
Neal Martin awarded his top score of the vintage – 96-98 points – to only one wine: La Mission Haut-Brion Blanc. The wine also received Jane Anson’s top score (97 points). Five more wines received his second-best score of 95-97 points, Haut-Brion Blanc, three Pomerols and Lafite Rothschild.
The First Growths feature much higher on Martin’s list than Galloni’s, with Mouton, Margaux and Latour all obtaining 94-96 points. Aside from these (and with other notable exceptions), his top wines are comprised largely of whites (both dry and sweet), and Right Bank, Merlot dominant wines.
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 620+ merchant members from across the globe. Together they represent the largest pool of liquidity in the world – currently £140m of bids and offers across 20,000 wines.
