Bordeaux Vintage Chart: Every Year 2000 to 2024
Bordeaux vintage chart with a rating, a drink or hold verdict, and a drinking window for all 25 vintages from 2000 to 2024. Free, no sign-up.
Grapes
Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc
Typical window
8 to 30 years from vintage for classed growths, 4 to 10 for petits châteaux
Ready now
17 of 25 vintages
Still holding
6 vintages
Bordeaux vintage chart
Sommo drinking-window engine · updated July 2026| Vintage | Rating | Verdict | Drinking window | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | ★★☆☆☆ | hold | 2028 to 2036 | A cold, wet growing season with persistent disease pressure and difficult flowering produced light, high-acid, herbal wines that ask to be drunk in their first decade. |
| 2023 | ★★★★☆ | hold | 2029 to 2045 | Heavy mildew pressure through a humid spring was followed by a hot, dry finish, and careful growers made a large crop of ripe, balanced wines with good structure. |
| 2022 | ★★★★★ | hold | 2029 to 2050 | Extreme heat and severe drought should have ruined the year, but the vines adapted and the wines came in dense, aromatic, and surprisingly fresh, with enormous but polished tannin. |
| 2021 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2025 to 2036 | Frost, mildew, and a cool, damp summer forced hard selection, and the wines are light, fresh, and lower in alcohol in an old-fashioned way, charming now rather than later. |
| 2020 | ★★★★☆ | hold | 2027 to 2045 | Drought stress and a compact, early harvest made small, thick-skinned berries and darkly concentrated, firmly tannic wines that are still closed. |
| 2019 | ★★★★★ | hold | 2027 to 2048 | A warm, dry year with cool nights kept acidity intact alongside full ripeness, and the wines combine depth with lift in a way that rewards patience. |
| 2018 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2024 to 2045 | Relentless spring mildew was followed by intense summer heat and drought, giving very ripe, high-alcohol, powerfully concentrated wines that lean rich rather than classic. |
| 2017 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2021 to 2032 | A severe April frost cut the crop badly in low-lying vineyards, and the surviving wines are lighter and more perfumed, pleasant to drink but not built for the long haul. |
| 2016 | ★★★★★ | hold | 2027 to 2050 | A very wet spring gave way to an exceptionally dry summer, and the combination produced wines with dense fruit wrapped in tight, fine-grained tannin that still need years to unwind. |
| 2015 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2021 to 2040 | A hot, dry summer broke with useful August rain, and the wines are ripe and generous, with the Right Bank and the gravels south of the city faring best. |
| 2014 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2019 to 2035 | A gloomy summer gave way to a long, warm, dry September and October that ripened Cabernet beautifully, producing fresh, classically shaped wines with real definition. |
| 2013 | ★☆☆☆☆ | past | 2016 to 2022 | A cold, wet flowering wrecked the crop and rot spread through a rainy harvest, giving dilute, short reds that were finished almost as soon as they were bottled. |
| 2012 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2016 to 2028 | A late, uneven season with harvest rain favored earlier-picked Merlot, so the Right Bank made reasonable, softly fruited wines while the Left Bank stayed thin. |
| 2011 | ★★☆☆☆ | drink | 2015 to 2027 | An early, hot spring followed by a cool, damp summer scrambled ripening, and the wines came out lean and drying, best drunk before their tannin outlasts the fruit. |
| 2010 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2018 to 2050 | Dry conditions and cool nights concentrated small berries into powerful, high-tannin, high-acid wines that are more reserved than 2009 and will outlive it. |
| 2009 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2016 to 2045 | A warm, dry, generous season pushed ripeness to unusual levels, producing plush, sweet-fruited wines with soft tannin that were seductive young and still have decades ahead. |
| 2008 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2013 to 2032 | A difficult summer turned around with a dry, cool autumn that allowed a late harvest, giving classically proportioned wines with firm structure and restrained fruit. |
| 2007 | ★★☆☆☆ | past | 2010 to 2022 | A wet, cool summer brought heavy mildew pressure and uneven ripening, and the resulting light, herbal wines were built for early drinking rather than the cellar. |
| 2006 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2012 to 2030 | Rain around harvest interrupted an otherwise warm year, leaving tannic, sometimes austere wines with less flesh than the vintage before or after. |
| 2005 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2012 to 2045 | A dry, sunny, remarkably even season with no rain to dilute the finish produced concentrated wines with ripe tannin and firm acidity that are only now opening properly. |
| 2004 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2010 to 2028 | A large crop and a cool, classic season made medium-weight wines with fresh acidity and modest concentration that have drunk pleasantly without ever gaining much depth. |
| 2003 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2008 to 2028 | The European heatwave scorched vines and shut down ripening in many plots, giving low-acid, jammy wines that mostly aged fast, though the cooler clay soils of the northern Médoc produced some unexpectedly long-lived exceptions. |
| 2002 | ★★★☆☆ | drink | 2008 to 2028 | A damp, uncertain summer was rescued by a fine, dry September that favored late-ripening Cabernet, so Left Bank wines are savory and firm while Merlot-led Right Bank bottles turned out leaner. |
| 2001 | ★★★★☆ | drink | 2008 to 2030 | Cooler and less flashy than the year before, with fresher acidity and moderate ripeness producing elegant, aromatic wines that were underrated on release and are lovely now. |
| 2000 | ★★★★★ | drink | 2010 to 2040 | A warm, even season with a dry finish gave deeply colored, firmly structured wines on both banks that have aged into classic cedar and tobacco territory. |
Ratings are Sommo's own reading of the vintage, on a five-point scale. Verdicts come from the same drinking-window engine the app runs on a bottle you scan, so a chart here and a bottle in your cellar are judged the same way. 2 of these vintages are past their best by our reckoning, which is the column most charts quietly leave out.
Bordeaux is the region vintage charts were invented for, and it is also the one where a single number hides the most. A year that suited the gravel of the Left Bank often did nothing for the clay of Pomerol, and the reverse happens just as regularly. Where a vintage split that way, the note says so.
Two other things distort a Bordeaux chart. Classified growths and everyday claret age on completely different clocks, so a window that fits a Pauillac fifth growth is far too long for a supermarket bottle. And the modern run of warm years has shortened the wait: wines that would once have needed fifteen years are drinkable at eight without falling apart later.
Common questions
The chart's drink column answers that year by year. As a rule of thumb, classed growths from the early 2000s and the 2010s are broadly in their windows, while the most structured recent years are still climbing. Everyday Bordeaux from any year older than about eight is usually past its best rather than improving.
The Left Bank is Cabernet Sauvignon on gravel, which needs a long warm season to ripen fully. The Right Bank is Merlot-dominant on clay and limestone, which ripens earlier and suffers more in a hot drought year. A cool, late season tends to favor the Right Bank; a long warm one favors the Left.
No. Vintage explains perhaps a third of what is in a glass of Bordeaux. Producer, site, and how the bottle was stored explain most of the rest. A well-made wine from a modest year in a cold cellar beats a great year that spent three summers in a warm kitchen.
It depends on the tier far more than on the year. Classed growths from good vintages reward fifteen to thirty years; cru bourgeois and better petits châteaux want five to twelve; the rest are made to drink within five. The chart's windows assume the classified end of the market.
They are Sommo's own reading of each vintage, on a five-point scale, and the verdicts come from the same drinking-window logic the app applies to a bottle you scan. They are not aggregated critic scores.