Before we delve into the news, a note that Tim Atkin MW recently interviewed Jancis for The Tim Atkin Cork Talk Podcast, which will be live this Friday, 26 April.
2022 Port declarations
As you all likely know, vintage port is not produced every year – it is only produced in the best years and constitutes only 2% of total port production. But, frustratingly, not everyone agrees on what a vintage year looks like. So the way it’s determined whether or not a house will produce a vintage wine goes roughly like this: about 14–16 months following a harvest, Port houses will start tasting their wines and decide whether they think the wines are good enough. So in early 2024, houses were looking at the 2022 vintage.
Even if they decide the quality of the vintage is not good enough to make a vintage blend, they may choose to make single-quinta vintage port from their best-performing single vineyards. Whether or not they decide on a blend or a single quinta, between January and June the house must submit that wine to the IVDP (Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto) to see if it meets the Institute’s standard. Once that’s confirmed, the house will announce the vintage.
This year Niepoort, Quevedo and Sogrape’s Offley have declared full vintage blends. Symington’s brands have only declared single quintas, with Cockburn’s declaring Quinta dos Canais, Dow’s declaring Quinta do Bomfim and Quinta da Senhora da Ribeira, Graham’s declaring Quinta dos Malvedos, Warre’s declaring Quinta da Cavadinha, and Quinta do Vesuvio declaring both their standard bottling and Capela do Vesúvio. The Fladgate Partnership – owners of Taylor’s, Fonseca, Croft and Krohn – will declare tomorrow. The Port Forum does an excellent job of tracking what has been announced.
Once everyone has announced, both the IVDP and the Port Wine Brotherhood will announce whether it’s a classic vintage year (typically around September). This will be based on whether most houses declare. In the past two decades classic vintages are 2000, 2003, 2007, 2011, 2016 and 2017. We will see if 2022 joins the ranks.
Bordeaux en primeur
This week is en primeur in Bordeaux. That means that members of the trade and media are in Bordeaux tasting barrels of the yet-to-be-released 2023 vintage from the most prestigious Bordeaux estates. Importers and merchants will secure their allocations of these wines now, pre-paying for wine still in barrel, because the top wines are in such high demand that waiting until regular release means that they may not be able to purchase any. Critics and journalists will turn out pre-release scores so that when merchants offer their customers the ability to buy pre-release wines at the beginning of summer, they’ll have something to base their purchases on.
If you are a consumer who plans to buy en primeur, you’ll want to look at the harvest reports. Gavin Quinney of Château Bauduc wrote a very detailed report of the 2023 growing season that details how the shorter-than-average crop, warm weather and mildew pressure varied in comparison to past vintages. Our Bordeaux specialist, James Lawther MW, is at en primeur reviewing. His overview will be out 2 May and his notes will be out 6–8 May to help you with purchasing decisions.
Speaking of harvest reports, last week South Africa wine specialist Malu Lambert wrote on the 2024 vintage in South Africa and how, though the region experienced disastrous floods at the end of September, which hurt infrastructure, the quality of the grape crop is very good. Her regional breakdown is also free on our site.
Vinea Wachau's sustainability commitment
In Austria, a regional organisation called Vinea Wachau represents more than 200 producers who have committed to upholding certain quality standards within their region and have relinquished the right to buy in grapes or cultivate vineyards outside of Wachau. Members agree to make dry wines labelled with the designations Steinfeder® (feather light under 11.5% alcohol), Federspiel® (midweight with 11.5%–12.5% alcohol), and Smaragd® (richer wines above 12.5% alcohol). In addition to adhering to these regulations and system of labelling, the organisation just became the first regional organisation in Austria to have all member producers certified under the Sustainable Austria certification. All wines, as of the release of the 2023 vintage, will be certified under Sustainable Austria.
Note that certified ‘sustainable’ does not mean organic. In the case of Sustainable Austria there are not, with the exception of glyphosate, any prohibited products or practices. Instead a third-party organisation evaluates 360 factors in 9 categories (quality, social factors, economic factors, climate, raw materials, energy, soil, biodiversity and water) and rates each on a scale of extremely negative to excellent. As an example, under the category of soil you may garner an excellent rating for keeping a permanent cover crop and not tilling, but then you may receive an ‘extremely negative’ rating for choosing to use herbicides to manage weeds. These may balance, allowing you to achieve sustainable certification as long as you also do things such as build stone walls to avoid erosion on steep slopes, compost and use suitable rootstocks for planting. If you speak German, you can play around with the tool they use for calculation on the Sustainable Austria site.
Regardless of whether you think this kind of certification goes far enough, I’d like to point out that, while there are many regions with their own sustainable certifications, there are very few that have managed to get the entire regional membership to certify under those standards. If you know of other regions where you can grab a bottle off the shelf and be assured of a baseline commitment to sustainability, please drop those regions in the forum/comments.
This is a transcript of our weekly five-minute news broadcast, which you can watch below. You can also listen to it on The JancisRobinson.com Podcast. If you have breaking news in your area, please email news@jancisrobinson.com. And if you enjoy this content and would like to see more like it, please subscribe to our site and our weekly newsletter.
Photo at top: the Achleiten vineyard in Austria's Wachau; photo by Robert Herbst.
*Correction: The Fladgate Partnership sold Krohn to WineStone in October 2023.
