The 2016 Bordeaux Vintage: The Making of a Modern Classic
Bordeaux Index
16 January 2026
A decade on from the first tastings, we revisit our team’s impressions of the Bordeaux 2016 vintage.
As Neal Martin observed in 2020, “the true litmus test for 2016, and any Bordeaux vintage, will be at the ten-year stage.”
THE 2016 VINTAGE IN STYLE: RED
From the very first tastings, 2016 showed extraordinary promise, drawing attention for its balance, finesse and the remarkable quality that would come to define the vintage.
David Thomas, our Director of Fine Wine, captured the excitement back in 2017:
“I have just returned from tasting the 2016 vintage in Bordeaux, and I hate to hype a vintage too much, but 2016 deserves some serious loving… these truly are some of the greatest wines I have tasted En Primeur.”
From the outset, 2016 revealed itself as a vintage of poise: very good to outstanding in its best expressions, and often exceptional. When we described the 2015 vintage the previous year, we suggested that Bordeaux traditionally fell into three broad styles - ‘great’ (huge and powerful), ‘classical’ (fresh, sometimes verging on green, but with pretty fruit) and ‘claret lover’s’ or ‘restaurant’ vintages (often rather forgettable). Neither 2015 nor 2016 adhered neatly to these stereotypes, though they are emphatically not the same.
2016 is certainly another very good to excellent vintage, but at its peak it included some of the finest young wines we had ever tasted from the region. In some cases, we firmly believed that we were looking at a modern-day combination of 1982, 1985 and 1989, albeit with winegrowing know-how light years ahead of those great historic examples. As Jancis Robinson noted in her own report back in April 2017, “the vignerons meanwhile are learning to cope with new technologies and a level of precision that would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago.”
“As Pierre-Olivier Clouet of St-Émilion top dog Ch Cheval Blanc (very excited about his new dry white wine) pointed out, even in the great 1982 vintage, only about 80% of the grapes would have been picked with perfect ripeness. A good 10% would have been underripe and green-tasting while 10% were probably unappetisingly overripe. ‘But in 2016 every plot could be picked at perfect ripeness', so carefully have the vineyards of Bordeaux (following their counterparts in Napa Valley) been subdivided into homogeneous plots to be picked and vinified together once their progress to perfection has been monitored with surgical exactitude.” – Jancis Robinson
BALANCE AND PRECISION
What characterised 2016 back when we first tasted it was balance. Fantastic acidity, moderately low alcohol and purity of fruit were supported by a vast weight of tannins which had amazing softness and finesse. The slow, dry ripening period allowed the sugar levels to build in parallel with the phenolics and the low levels of photosynthesis in the vine reduced the rate at which acid levels dropped. Whilst the perfumes and aromatics were extraordinary, the textures took the cake.
The First Growths and Saint-Émilion’s Premier Grand Cru Classé ‘A’ estates were sublime. The Médoc delivered benchmark-setting wines; Pomerol excelled on the plateau; limestone-rich Saint-Émilion shone once again; and in the Graves the best estates made some of the finest wines in their long histories.”
Neal Martin’s annual report of the Bordeaux vintage was released in May 2017. He stated at the time “the best wines of Bordeaux 2016 ‘send tingles down the spine’ in a vintage he says is defined by precision and fully lives up to the hype."
There seems to be a consensus that as a region, they have moved towards a fresh, elegant, and purer style of Bordeaux than before – whose virtues of freshness and detail are just as important as fruit intensity, which is naturally bestowed by terroir rather than winemaking techniques (in part due to global warming). Even a cynic, and trust me to review Bordeaux it is always best to be cynical, must admit that these 2016s live up to expectations. The pleasure they will give Bordeaux lovers is immeasurable.” - Neal Martin
In short, 2016 emerged as a vintage of classicism and clarity: wines of elegance, precision and deep-rooted sense of place, combining immediate charm with formidable ageing potential. As one of the team observed at the time, it marked “a new level of finesse”, with 2016 being “a vintage that rewards attention and patience alike, offering wines of elegance, precision and enduring appeal - a testament to the mastery of Bordeaux’s winemakers at the height of their craft.”
THE 2016 VINTAGE CONDITIONS
Within certain bounds of regional variability, albeit far less than in some vintages, the season was one of four differing parts, the order and timing of which was just right to take it from the dreadful to the sublime.
This was by no means an easy vintage to produce; indeed, the extremes of weather conditions meant that smart, knife-edge decisions were constantly being made. On both sides of the river, those with a good portion of older vines and a majority of water-retaining soils had by far the best of the situation; many younger vines and those planted on sandy soils struggled with the drought.
However, when unpredictability works in your favour, one might call this ‘good luck’ and in these cases, of which there are many, the results were something special.
As we announced after two days of tasting: “if you love Bordeaux, and if you love the way Bordeaux used to taste in the heady days of the great vintages of the 1980s and 1990s but you want to see how far winegrowing has come in the past few decades in terms of precision and purity, you will not want to miss the 2016s.”