You can view all of our current Bordeaux 2024 en primeur listings at the bottom of this page, or see the release offers for each château here.

Introduction to the 2024 Bordeaux vintage

Despite being the wettest vintage of recent times, 2024 has produced some very good wines, many of them released for sale at large discounts (25-35% or more) on the previous vintage.  Understanding how the top châteaux have pulled this off requires an appreciation of how much viticulture and vinification have improved over the last two to three decades.  

Twenty or thirty years ago, weather like that experienced in ‘24 would been evident in the glass, producing dilute wines with unripe tannins, and probably a whiff of mustiness.  As a stagiaire at a famous château in Margaux during the 1994 vintage (another notably rainy year), I saw for myself the effect of heavy rainfall.  When I travelled to Bordeaux this April to taste the 2024s from barrel, I went with this in mind but, thirty years on, the difference is profound.   

The intervening years have seen huge advances in precision viticulture, micro-vinification, and the sheer focus on quality, leading to the top estates producing smaller amounts of wine, rigorously sorting the fruit.  These factors alone make a huge difference, but an even bigger factor is that, as well as being wet, 2024 was also a warm year, with average temperatures of 18.7 centigrade, comparable with 2021 (18.8 degrees) and 2016 (19.2 degrees).  August, in particular, saw some redemptive sunshine, creating the potential for excellent wines to be made.

The Growing Season

As we have already indicated, 2024 was very, very wet in Bordeaux.  The preceding winter saw prodigious amounts of rain, and this was followed by a rainy spring, with 126mm in May alone.  To put that into perspective, the weather station on the beach here at Aldeburgh has recorded 89.8mm so far for the entire year!  The total rain in the growing season was 650mm, compared to a 10-year average of 429mm.  Frequent rainfall and warm temperatures led to high mildew pressure at some vineyards.  As fast as the vineyard workers could laboriously apply expensive mildew treatments, they were often washed away within a day or two by more rain.

The rainfall levels in July and August were more moderate and those months saw some warm temperatures, but the numbers fail to convey how cloudy it was in the first half of July.  Thankfully, a mini heat wave at the end of July and a hot, dry August saved the vintage, In fact, Neal Martin (Vinous, May 2025) speculates that with a hot, dry September, 2024 could still have been a great vintage.  More rain put paid to that, delaying most harvests until 23 September.  Merlot fared less well on the left bank than Cabernet, leading to lots of Cabernet-driven wines in ’24, adding to the impression of this as a year for elegant, linear, focused wines, without as much fleshiness as some years.  Many bunches were affected by millerandage, known in English as ‘hen & chickens’, with large, ripe berries mixed with small, unripe ones in the same bunch. Sorting in the vineyard and at the winery reception areas was key, which is where the kind of lavish attention to detail only possible at a cru classé estate comes into its own.

The Wines

Tasting the 2024s, we found may with attractive floral and fruit aromas, clean fruit flavours, and ripe tannins, with fresh, balancing acidity.  Fruit concentration levels are not the same as those in vintages like 2019, ’20 and ’22, but we think that, with ageing, the ‘24s will become balanced, complex wines. 

This is a heterogeneous vintage, with quality varying not just by commune, but by château.  In general, it’s safe to say that this is an excellent vintage for white wines, the unsung heroes of 2024.  We will have to think about offering you more 2024 whites in the coming months (but do please enquire in the meantime).  Our selection below contains a little over fifty wines, compared to the ninety-plus wines we have offered in recent vintages.  This is based on our own tasting experience, the critics’ reviews and relative value.  The selection contains numerous famous châteaux that have produced delicious wines, with excellent ageing potential, offered at prices which bring them back within reach of many more wine lovers than for many vintages, so we hope you will find something to tempt you.  

 Antony Irvine