Good day,
I’m hoping to draw on the wisdom of the crowd here to see if we can curate a list of the 3-4 “best” wines from every vintage of Bordeaux going back as far as you wish. I have looked around at this site and others and haven’t really found anything as centralized and easily accessible as I would like for my lazy ass (if you know of a resource that is already out the, please let me know). I guess my ultimate goal here is for when I am looking to backfill my cellar with old Bordeaux, there would be quick and dirty list of a few wines from any particular year that I can target to optimize my chances of picking a winner.
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Unless you apply some objective limitations, you may find that opinions as to what the “best” wines are tend to converge on the usual Bordeaux suspects (the five “1st growths”, Petrus and Lafleur), not always, but often and subject to exceptions (which usually differ from vintage to vintage). So, you may want to consider putting a price limit or expanding the number from 3-4 to say 5-10. I like the exercise.
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The only tip I have is that in 2002 anything with the word Leoville in it is your friend.
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You can use CT to get community ratings
2000 Petrus
2001 Ausone
2002 La Grace Die (albeit only one note!) Latour probably has enough notes to qualify.
2003 Latour
2004 Le Pin
etc…
Maybe if you put guardrails - otherwise as alluded it will mostly be the usual suspects - FGs, Ausone, Cheval Blanc, Le Pin, Petrus.
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There is no best.
Here is a list of critic scores going back to 2004. You are still going to have to do work sorting it all out but it’s a start.
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That list is cool, Mark,
Thanks!
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Using the bordoverview info, it would be pretty easy (but laborious) to compose a list of the most critically acclaimed wines of each vintage. It is extremely unlikely that this approach would actually result in a list of your (or anyone else’s) wines of the vintage.
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This is incredible, seems like a monumental effort. This is essentially what I was looking for, but more so. Now if only they can keep adding beyond 2004 we’ll be in good shape.
they’ve added every year so it seems likely
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1961 Latour
Paragraph
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‘82 Lafleur.
Every other ‘82 Bordeaux.
Thus endeth the lesson.
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In the 1970s, when I was first learning about wine, one of the first things I learned was that word Leoville was my friend in many vintages.
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2002 Bordeaux is such a weird, forgotten vintage that has a reputation for - well, no reputation. It’s like the year never happened. 10 years ago a retailer was selling LLC for $82 a bottle because 2002. I picked a three pack up and was stunned when I finally tried them. They aren’t bruisers, more delicate, but incredibly flavorful. I picked up some Barton and Poyferre over the last few years and each ond of them has been light, floral and wonderful. There seems to be some successful Pauillac too, and then beyond that it’s more like bottles of wine with sheets over them and eye holes cut out, saying “whooooooo.”
There are some very nice Pessacs as well… Haut-Bailly for example.
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Since the 90s, any wine where Rolland was involved is likely fantastic.
There, was that enough to start a fight? 
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2002 Pichon Baron has been really great, even with the sting of the $39.95 price tag on the bottles I sourced from WineBid for a bit more than that…
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It’s a fairly broad request you have posted. If you’re doing this to acquire wines, it might help to provide a price range you are comfortable spending. Some of the wines recommended in this thread are thousands of dollars.
Maybe, you might pick a vintage or two you’re most interested in, that could also narrow down the list.
You can use the tasting note search function on my site to read reviews/notes on Bordeaux going back to the late 1800s
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I found five of these in my cellar this summer - I have had 3 and agree they are drinking well for what they are. More tannic driven and less fruit - nonetheless elegant and worthy of the 40 bucks paid a long time ago.
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There is rarely such a thing as a “wine of the vintage,” too many different points of view. Sure, occasionally you get a legend by acclamation like 1945 Mouton but that is not something that happens every year. And when it does happen, it’s usually a first growth (1945 Mouton excepted), which isn’t very sporting.
Perhaps a better exercise is to pick out the years when the stars aligned for one or more of the seconds (etc.) and they stood alongside or ahead of the firsts, e.g.
'75 La Mission
'82 Pichon Lalande
'86 Gruaud, Rauzan Segla
'89 Baron
'90 Montrose, Las Cases
'95 Ducru
'96 Montrose, Cos
'99 Palmer
'00 Barton
'03 Montrose
'16 Montrose, Baron
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