Wine
The New Bordeaux Vintage Looks Great, But Will Politics Affect Prices?
The new wines look as though they'll be even better than last year's, but Brexit, Trump, and French elections loom large among the chateaus.
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The big wine story next week will take place in Bordeaux, where flags are already flying over turreted stone chateaus to welcome several thousand enthusiastic merchants and journalists. They’re swooping in from around the globe for en primeur, the region’s famous annual spring ritual. (Some call it a circus.)
From Monday to Friday we’ll all sip and spit hundreds of red, white, and sweet wines from the new 2016 vintage, still aging in oak barrels, to evaluate how the wines are turning out. The weather last year was, as they say, complicated but ended well. So far, local Bordeaux wine whisperers claim the quality of the 2016s is as exceptional, possibly even better, than the superb 2015s I reported on last year.