Vintage reports

2024 is a cool year, and the wines are slender, they are pure, and they are animated, that’s for sure. But high natural acidities are buffered by small, very pretty, mostly citrus and white fruits, with a delectable, salty feeling that adds structure, subtlety and interest.

With the proliferation of hot sunny vintages in recent years, vintages like 2021 and 2024 become all the more interesting. As one chateau owner told us, making good wine in 2024 was a rich man's game. That a handful of elite chateaux managed to make very good and, in some cases, excellent wine in such adverse conditions is a triumph of ingenuity and perseverance. Life isn't fair as a vigneron.

A year of exceptional balance and freshness - 2021 is an extremely high-quality vintage that ranks amongst the finest of the past twenty years.

If 2022 gave us cause for optimism, that great wines can be made in a changing climate, then 2023 takes this a step further.

In 2023 we have a vintage through which the undeniable challenges of the season have brought into sharp focus the privilege we have in working with Germany’s greatest estates.

2023 is the vintage that contradicts the old proverb, “You cannot eat your cake and have it too.”

A lucid, ruby-hued vintage, rich in perfume, textural delicacy, artistic expression and more than a few moments of grandeur.

Burgundy’s 2022 vintage was a year that made producers smile. Excellent ripening conditions across the Côte mean that there’s quality to be found throughout the region, from the humblest of Hauts Côtes to the greatest of Grands Crus.

This vintage has surprised everybody. Despite prolonged heat in the nation, 2022 Rieslings show strength and energy.

Anyone who’s had the Bordeaux marketing experience will know that chateaux have a slight obsession with numbers. It’s a statistician’s dream: IPTs, pHs, assemblages, percentage of new oak, hours of sunshine, temperature charts, rainfall.

Piedmont 2019 promises a raft of vertical, nuanced Barolos and Barbarescos that will thrill Nebbiolo lovers from the first encounter. Initiating a trio of potentially outstanding vintages, 2019 has a toned, energetic character with a gravitas and vitality to the fruit that in our view most closely resembles the exceptional 2013 vintage at the same stage.

We have always adored the Rhône Valley in all its luminous, lavish, multi-faceted splendour. It is, though, an uncomfortable truth that the Rhône has fallen out of favour to the sorts of “precise”, “vivid”, “mineral-driven” wines that are easy to appreciate but hard to access.

We are delighted to introduce the Justerini & Brooks Tuscany Collection 2022. Our Tuscan portfolio is small in scale but high in quality. It is concise. From the Radda hills of Chianti Classico we are exclusive importers for the sanguine, vivid, stony wines of Monteraponi.

The 2022 Rieslings have surprised everybody. Animated and open, acidity levels sit between 2019 and 2020 – these are not flabby wines, nor are they diluted.