Fiona’s Blog

Following a series of difficult vintages, mainly provoked by the challenges of climate change - drought, frost, mildew, heatwaves, hail - to cite just a few examples, you may have noticed how different many vineyards look today compared to the tightly manicured rows of a decade ago. Today wine growers are questioning the traditional way of safeguarding the health of their vines that used synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides to grow grapes.

Last weekend, I took advantage of the rain and cold to snuggle up with my favourite part of our yearly wine guide, the “Kelder Restjes” or “Fonds du Cave.” These are the wines that we only have left in small quantity, and it understandably is the first part of the wine guide that our clients dive into.

This question has been on my mind a great deal recently. Last year we saw Burgundy wine prices skyrocket and the trend has continued for much of this year. This year we watched as the best wines of the highly touted 2022 Bordeaux, wines such as Petrus, Lafite, Vieux Chateau Certan and Figeac sold for upwards of 20% above the previous year’s releases. Quite frankly, we wondered whether we would be able to sell some of these wines. Much to our surprise, they were the first wines to sell out; there is a sense of luxury in being able to afford the world’s best wines, which are often made in small quantities that make them rarer.

2022 is a miraculous vintage. It was the year that the vine showed its resilience to climate change and adapted to both the heat and the drought that were present throughout the summer, to make elegant, fresh, fruity wines that often showed the best of the terroirs in which they grow. We have never seen anything like it!

I want to take you back to the end of August. We were nervous. Talk around us was that yet again, harvesting in Bordeaux was beginning at the earliest dates ever recorded. We walked around our vineyards nervously checking the state of the vine leaves; noticing the cracks in the parched soil; consulting again and again all the different weather apps we had on our telephones. Absolutely not necessary to check our rain monitors; they had been dry for months.

We have been through quite a roller coaster. When I wrote this introduction at the same time last year, we were preparing for the 2021 wine harvest, unsure as to whether we would have much of a crop after the biblical storms of hail, frost and rain that are vines had endured. It was not until the beginning of 2022 after the third omicron wave of Covid had hit us face on, that we took time in our cellars to assess the vintage. To our great surprise, the wines were lovely and fresh; classic in style with a coolness and a minerality which suited the autumn fruit flavours. It is a vintage which will grow in stature as the wines age.