We are just finishing running off the wines into oak barrels and sending the pomace off to the distillery to make hand sanitizer in these Covid times. It is only now, when things are slowing down, that we have time to take stock of this extra-ordinary vintage. We were so busy dealing with the weather extremes, the sanitary measures imposed, the last-minute changes and adaptations we had to make, that we rather forgot to appreciate the wine.

This is not hyperbole nor crying wolf again, but we have just woken up to the realization that the wines are really beautiful. Then colours are deep and brilliant; the aromas rich and spicy, perhaps not quite as overtly fruity as the 2019s but deeper and more profound in their flavours. We have especially noted the quality of tannins across our three estates (Le Pin, L’IF and L’Hêtre). Due to their perfect maturity, they are round, complete and very fine. The old vines which were harvested after the rain showed particularly good balance. While we worried at first about high alcohol levels and low acidities, the mid-harvest rain seems to have tempered the extremes so that the wines are all at 14°to 14,5 ° and the acidities are really good. This seems to be due to the phenomena of concentration caused by the drought when both sugars and acidities became more intense.

The sad fact is that almost everywhere the quantities are down by as much as 30% due to a variety of factors which include drought, hail, mildew and the sad process of having to pull out old and virused vines. What surprised us in 2020 was the vines’ ability to resist the extremes of climate change.

Looking further, we certainly have to continue to enable our vines to adjust to the current weather patterns. The main issue is to keep balance in the wine; to make sure that the vine is stressed enough to produce interesting grapes but not dried out so that the leaves fall off and photosynthesis stops. We have increased our canopy of leaves so that they shade the grapes during the summer. We have adapted our ploughing and our cover crops to retain as much moisture as possible in the soil and we have changed our pruning techniques to space the fruit out as much as possible along the vine branches.

Many wonder if irrigation, which is currently forbidden except for young vines in Bordeaux, is the answer to climate change? Questioning several Bordeaux experts on this issue, including a renowned soil scientist, all believe that irrigation fundamentally changes the flavours and the aromas of a wine. Fresh notes of blossom, flowers and herbs tend to be replaced by aromas of ripe fruit, stalky tannins and jammy flavours. Too much irrigation can lead to big, plump and diluted grapes. Once you start irrigating vines, just like trees, there is no turning back.

What I didn’t know until I started asking around, was that the trunk of a vine expands and contracts according to how much water is available. If the vine’s torso shrinks too much, water supply is cut off for the bunches. At night, in the weeks leading up to the harvest both the trunk and the grapes will expand and contract, especially if temperatures vary considerably. I have no scientific evidence to back me up on this, but the friction caused by this out and in movement, seems to have a polishing affect on the berries making them finer and more expressive. Incidentally, during the harvest, we and our team had the chance to taste a lot of old vine wines from around the world; they seem to the ultimate climate regulator – their deep root systems being the wise purveyors of just enough moisture, minerals and micro-organisms to ripen the grapes perfectly.

The wines are now in their barrels and it’s time to turn our attention once again to the vineyards: repairing stakes, replacing trellising wires, ploughing in the cover crops and getting ready to prune. We will leave the vines to their hibernation and report back again once it is time to taste the newborn wines next Spring.

Fiona Morrison MW, Pomerol