Very Good Bordeaux Wine At A Good Price

The top wines of Bordeaux are some of the most popular and highest rated in the world, but also carry some pretty hefty price tags because of that popularity and those ratings.  However, there are very good Bordeaux wines at much lower prices.  In this post I will talk about one way to find some very good Bordeaux wines at what I think are attractive prices. 

One of the things that is very confusing about Bordeaux wines is the multiple different classifications that the vineyards have.  The vineyards with the very highest ratings in those classifications carry the highest prices, and they make great wine that lets them sell out their harvest every year at those prices.  But many of those top rated vineyards also make a second wine.  These second wines are not great, but they are very good.  The current vintages generally sell in the $30-60 range, and I will provide more specifics on prices for five of them that I think are very good examples.  Those same wines will carry higher price tags as they age.  As of this writing in June of 2023, the 2020 vintage is generally available and the 2021 should hit the stores very soon and the prices that I will be talking about are for those vintages.

What is a “second wine” and what do I mean by “very good” as opposed to “great”?  Second wines are usually made from same vineyards as the Grand Cru wines, but from younger grapes and from plots that were not completely used in the final blending of the Grand Cru wine.  The grapes from younger vines do not have the same flavor as grapes from older vines because their root system is still growing and is not delivering all the trace elements from the terroir that a mature vine with a deep root system does.  Also, some of the parcels may have been more impacted by weather, e.g. too little or too much rain, and their quality for this harvest is not up to the Grand Cru level. 

There is no strict definition of what a second wine has to be in order to carry the name, it is totally up to the owner of the Chateau.  But the market has determined that many of these second wines will sell at prices 25-40% of the price of the Grand Cru wine from that same Chateau. 

What I like about these second wines is that many of the winemakers are saying these second wines are better than the Grand Cru wines they made 40 years ago.  They have made major investments in their wine making equipment and processes, many of them in the last 10 years, and that has significantly improved the quality of their Grand Cru wines.  Their second wine is made by the same winemaker and goes through the same processes with the same equipment and technology as the Grand Cru wine so it has also had a very significant quality improvement in recent years.  

The picture on the left below is the room used by Lynch-Bages starting in 1866 to receive the grapes, destem them, crush them, put them into the wooden barrels to ferment, and press the skins after maceration to get all of the remaining juice.  The picture on the right is their new cellar opened last year and bottling their first wine this year.  

Some of the significant things that the new vat room has that positively impacts the quality of the wine being made include:

• The entire process from receiving the just harvested grapes to bottling the wine uses gravity to move the grapes and juice from one stage to the next.  No grapes or juice is ever pumped through hoses avoiding the trauma that such pumping inflicts on the grapes and the juice. 
• The destemmed grapes are put on a belt that goes through an optical sensor.  Any grape that does not meet their standards gets a puff of air that shoots it off the belt and into the trash.  Those rejected grapes are not used for the second wine. 
• The stainless steel fermentation tanks can be strictly temperature controlled to get the best low temperature fermentation.
• There are enough tanks of different sizes that each plot of vines has it own tank for fermentation and for maceration.  The blending can then be done using the unique characteristics of each plot to get the very best wine and then move that blended wine into oak barrels for a year of aging before bottling.  The wines not used for the Grand Cru are then blended to produce the second wine, which barrel ages for just a month of so less than the Grand Cru wine. 
• The barrel cellar can be kept at 15° C (59° F) with just the right humidity for aging.
• While not related to the quality of the wine produced, everything about the building, the windows, the lighting, and the processes used is very efficient from an energy perspective.

The pictures below are the new cellars of Beychevelle, Haut Bailly, Leoville Barton, and Figeac as other examples.  While all are fully committed to the gravity process and being very energy efficient, they have their own idiosyncrasies such as using concrete or wooden tanks of different sizes so they get the wine that they want to make.  The end result is wine of much higher quality, both their Grand Cru wine and their second wine.  It was a significant investment to put in completely new wine making equipment and many smaller chateaus are not able to afford that change yet and their wine is not getting those benefits. 

As a rule, a second wine is a little more fruit forward and will age a little faster than the Grand Cru wines.  Most wine makers suggest that you don’t even think of opening their Grand Cru wines for at least 10 years.  Anything later than 2013 should stay in your cellar.  Those wines will really hit their peak for drinkability at about 40 years of age and hold that peak for a long time after that.  The second wines should be held for at least 5 years and will show significant improvement for the next five years after that.  They will typically hold their peak for at least ten more years after that. 

If you buy a case of the 2020 vintage of any of the five wines below, your investment would be $360-720.  If you started in 2025 to drink one bottle a year, that wine would be really good and get even better each year.  You would want to decant it for a couple of hours and of course you want that wine at 16° C (61° F) to taste all of its wonderful flavor.   The last couple of bottles, if you could find them for sale in 2035, would probably retail for more per bottle than you paid for that full case of wine!  If you bought a case each year for a few years than you could do a vertical tasting with 3 or 4 bottles each from different vintages and see the differences from one vintage to the next and how each vintage is aging.  I believe you would quickly be in full agreement with me that these are very good wines at a good price.    

Many, but not all of the top chateaus, offer a second wine.  Below are five that I like and what the 2020 vintage is currently selling for.

• Beychevelle Amiral – $40-45.  Chateau Beychevelle was 4^th Growth in the famous 1855 Classification of the 60 estates making the best wine on the Left Bank.
• Echo de Lynch-Bages – $45-50.  Chateau Lynch-Bages was a 5^th Growth in the 1855 Classification.
• Chateau Blason d’Issan $30-35.  Chateau D’Issan was a 3^rd Growth in the 1855 Classification.
• Haut Bailly HB II $35-45.  Chateau Haut Bailly is a Graves Grand Cru Classe.
• Petit Figeac $55-60.  Chateau Figeac is a St. Emilion Premier Grand Cru Classe.

Download a list of the recommended wines with pictures or each bottle.

Second wines are not the only way to get very good Bordeaux wine at fraction of the price of the top classified Grand Cru wines.  I will be looking at a couple of other ways to affordably drink very good Bordeaux wines in some future posts.

Your comments and feedback is always welcome.