Bordeaux 2014 wines signal recovery after bad year

London

WINES from Bordeaux's 2014 grape harvest benefited from sunny picking conditions in September and are showing signs of improved quality after cool, wet weather cut yields in 2013, according to growers interviewed this month.

"2014 is encouraging," Gabriel Vialard, technical director of Chateau Haut Bailly in Pessac-Leognan, said at a trade event in Brussels on Feb 11. "It's a very smooth vintage." The improved outlook for 2014 wines, due for presentation to merchants in early April, coincides with signs of renewed appetite for vintages from the earlier part of the past decade. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 50 Index tracking Bordeaux had its first back-to-back monthly gain in December and January since March 2013, when cooling demand from China sparked a price slide.