The verdict The 2024 Bordeaux vintage is restrained and structured rather than opulent — a year that rewards classicists. Our top picks: Léoville Las Cases, Pichon Comtesse, and Cheval Blanc, with release pricing down sharply — frequently 20-30% or more — versus 2023.
The 2024 Bordeaux vintage will be remembered as a difficult one. After two consecutive years of warm, generous growing seasons, 2024 returned the region to the kind of weather pattern that has historically defined classic Bordeaux: a cool, wet spring, intermittent summer rainfall, and a saving September that brought ripening but not generosity. The result, across both Banks, is a vintage of structure and restraint rather than opulence.
This is our twenty-fourth consecutive en primeur report. Tastings were conducted across two visits to Bordeaux in March and April, covering 78 estates across the Médoc, Pessac-Léognan, Saint-Émilion, and Pomerol. The wines were tasted blind in flights of six to eight, with negociant samples returned to our Paris office for comparative re-tasting.
The growing season
The 2024 vintage began under sustained pressure. Heavy spring rainfall — the wettest March-to-May since 2013 — produced significant disease pressure across both Banks. Mildew and downy mildew were the principal challenges for biodynamic and organic estates, several of which experienced crop losses approaching 30% of normal yields.
July and August brought brief warm spells without the sustained heat of 2022 or 2023. Véraison (color change) occurred two weeks later than the recent average, and harvest dates for the Cabernet Sauvignon-dominant Left Bank estates extended into the second week of October — the latest harvest since 2013.
The Left Bank
The Left Bank wines, dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, have produced the more successful expressions of the vintage. The cool growing season has yielded wines with lower alcohol — typically 12.8 to 13.4% — and notably high natural acidity. The structural profile is reminiscent of the 2008 vintage, though without the latter’s eventual aromatic generosity.
Léoville Las Cases has, in our blind assessment, produced the wine of the vintage on the Left Bank. The wine shows exceptional purity of Cabernet fruit, fine-grained tannins, and the structural backbone that suggests genuine 25-year aging potential. The ex-négociant release came in around €96 per bottle, roughly a third below the 2023 release — one of the most aggressive cuts of the campaign.
Pichon Comtesse, similarly, has produced an unusually refined wine for the vintage, with the property’s signature suppleness emerging through the more austere 2024 framework. The release price of about €90 per bottle was down roughly 20% on 2023.
The First Growths have, predictably, performed strongly without representing absolute value. Lafite is austere and structured; Latour is the most concentrated of the five and may justify the highest pricing in time; Margaux has produced a wine of unusual elegance that stands out from the vintage’s general austerity. Mouton and Haut-Brion are both excellent without being categorically superior to the second-growth tier in 2024.
The Right Bank
The Right Bank, dominated by Merlot, has had a more difficult time of the vintage. Merlot’s earlier ripening cycle exposed it to more of the spring’s mildew pressure, and several estates have produced wines that show under-ripeness in the mid-palate. The successes are concentrated among the most resourceful estates with the most rigorous selection.
Cheval Blanc has produced the wine of the Right Bank in the vintage. The property’s high Cabernet Franc proportion (48% in 2024) has been a structural advantage; Cabernet Franc tolerates cool seasons more gracefully than Merlot does. The wine is sinewy, complex, and built for long aging. The ex-négociant release came in around €276 per bottle, down nearly 30% on 2023 — by Liv-ex’s reckoning the lowest en primeur release price for the grand vin since the 2008 vintage.
Allocation pricing
Across the major estates, en primeur pricing for 2024 has come in sharply below the 2023 release — commonly 20% to 30% lower, with several wines released at ten-year price lows. This is a meaningful reduction in absolute terms, though it reflects the market’s reading of vintage quality (and a soft secondary market) rather than any structural correction in the en primeur system. The First Growths remain priced at multiples of true wine-quality value; the second-tier classified estates continue, in our view, to represent the strongest value within the en primeur framework.
Conclusion
The 2024 vintage is one for classicists. Buyers seeking immediate gratification or a vintage that will deliver in the medium term should look elsewhere; 2018, 2019, and 2020 all remain the more drinkable choices for the next decade. But for a long-term cellar focused on Left Bank classified growths, 2024 will reward patient buyers with wines of genuine structural integrity at meaningfully reduced allocation pricing.
Verification
Every factual claim in this review was checked against external sources before publication, on 2026-04-29. Where a figure could not be independently confirmed, it is described in approximate terms in the text. To challenge a fact, write to corrections@premiumtravelreview.com.
