Bordeaux 2017: The Verdict

2nd May 2018. 

Yesterday Neal Martin published his excellent and extensive article on the 2017 Bordeaux vintage (Vinous.com) with Lafite, Eglise Clinet and l'Extravagant de Doisy Daene receiving his highest rating of 95-97.

All of his scores and tasting notes have now been added to our en primeur section where you can also compare them to other leading critics including The Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, James Suckling, Julia Harding MW & Decanter.

"The 2017 Bordeaux vintage is a good to very good vintage, but it is not close to 2015 or 2016 in all but a handful of cases. Some proprietors talked of a “2014-plus” which is pretty fair."

Neal Martin, Vinous

"Here is a vintage where pockets of extraordinary wines possessing great depth and super ripe, super fine-grained tannins can be found, achieving ripeness in some cases at around 13% alcohol. This is a quality and style of Bordeaux that we have not seen in many, many years"

Lisa Perrotti-Brown

"The quality of 2017 is much better than most people might expect... Over the past two weeks tasting in Bordeaux, I rated many wines 90 points or more together with my son Jack. I scored some of the wines from the great names of Bordeaux, such as the first growths and blue-chip Right Bank wines, between 96 to 99 points. Of course, these were the rare exceptions where remarkable terroirs, precise viticulture and winemaking delivered terrific results. The 2017 vintage underlines that vintage variations among the top wines of Bordeaux — like most key wine regions in the world — are much less than in the past."

James Suckling

"It's a small but good vintage with many wines that either escaped or were able to make a detour round the frost. Frost has been the story up to now, and will always be associated with 2017, as it was with 1991, but the difference is that good and excellent wines have been made."

Julia Harding MW

Neal Martin's Top Scoring Red Wines of the Vintage