By the end of next week, I’ll have spent twenty days in Bordeaux tasting around a thousand different wines, many of them two or three times each. When I leave, I’ll have completed individual château visits at around seventy different properties and tasted the extensive portfolios of six principal consultants, five merchants, and the Union des Grands Crus. As you can guess, much of my time is spent sniffing, sipping, and spitting, but equally important is the talking. Discovering the story behind the stories of the vintage is one of the most important objectives of this exercise, so I will not only tell you what the wines taste like and their relative success but also explain how and why.

For the past ten days, I have been accompanied by our photographer, Svante Ornberg, who has done an incredible job of capturing the spirit of the Bordeaux 2023 Primeurs season and the many players in this comedy of manners. While I’m still tasting and talking my way toward the final vintage report on 2023, I hope you enjoy Svante’s photos!