The annual “Southwold Group” tasting is an important event in the wine trade calendar. Every year in January, 20 of us get together for three days to blind taste our way through samples of 250 top red and white Bordeaux from the most recently physically released vintage. It’s a completely comprehensive tasting with every leading château of Bordeaux pleased to take part - bar two who don’t like their wines blind-tasted against the neighbours. I won’t name names, but they don’t get away with it as we just buy their wines in anyway. The panel of tasters contains some incredibly knowledgeable people including septuagenarians and wine trade heroes Sebastian Payne MW and Mark Savage MW. In fact, 12 of the panel are Masters of Wine and ages range from early 30s to mid-70s. We have representatives from most leading UK merchants including Berry Bros, Corney & Barrow, Justerini & Brooks, Lay & Wheeler, Goedhuis-Waddesdon and The Wine Society. We are joined by wine writers HRH Jancis Robinson MW OBE and Neal Martin of Vinous (formerly of The Wine Advocate). It’s a fantastic line-up of people and wine.
The integrity of the tasting requires us to taste the wines blind. However, it is very much not a competition and the average group scores – although calculated - are never circulated outside the membership. We taste the wines in “peer groups” where they are compared to other wines of similar geography and price. The late and much-missed Bill Blatch would always report back to the châteaux on how their wines had fared.
The origins of the group go back to the Suffolk Coast and the great Simon Loftus – former Chairman of Adnams who created the brilliant and innovative Adnams Wine Merchants during his time in charge of this historic brewery in the seaside resort of Southwold – a town that still looks like it is set in the 1950s. Simon put on the first Southwold event in 1980 – a tasting of 75 of the top red Bordeaux wines of the 1976 vintage. Participants included a beardless Clive Coates and Jancis Robinson. Not long after that – after Simon had led the restoration of the Crown Hotel – the tasting moved there and became a regular event. Early participants included Clive Coates, Richard Peat of Corney and Barrow, Hew Blair of J&B, Jasper Morris, John Avery and the legendary and larger than life Bill Baker of Reid Wines – the wine trade’s favourite wine merchant. Later arrivals were the incredibly knowledgeable Steven Spurrier (of Judgement of Paris fame) and my own mentor and guru Barry Phillips who ran the White Horse Inn at Chilgrove – featuring what was and always will be, Britain’s greatest restaurant wine list.
My own arrival at Southwold was in 1994 when we tasted our way through the 1990 vintage. I’ve lost my notes, but I do remember Pichon Baron being triumphant and a really good Lynch Bages too. This year was my 32nd Southwold tasting and certainly one of the best as we tasted the magnificent 2022 vintage. My colleague Thomas Parker MW will write about it here in more detail soon, but this is clearly a fantastic year (especially for the reds) and one of the best that we have ever tasted. Personally, I’d rank it alongside 2005, 2009, 2010, 2016 and 2019. I think that I maybe still just prefer the cool, classic and classy 2016s or the charming and downright delicious 2019s (the new 1982!). But time will tell.
We have two samples of each wine and save the second bottle to retry at another blind tasting “Ten Years On”. This is a tradition that goes back to the 1980s and my first one was a fantastic start. It was held at Lay & Wheeler in Colchester in 1992 and spotlighted the gorgeous 1982 vintage. What a wonderful tasting that was! This annual event was never held at Southwold and for many years was hosted by Bill Baker at The Mill, Hallatrow. Subsequently at The White Horse Inn, Chilgrove and sometimes at the old Farr Vintners office in Battersea. Since Farr Vintners moved to new offices next to Wandsworth Bridge in 2016, both tastings have been held in our light-filled and purpose-built tasting room with panoramic views of the Thames. Despite attempts of others to hijack the name of our tasting group, the original “Ten Years On” goes from strength to strength and we are about to sit down to 150 samples from the 2016 vintage now that they are approaching maturity.
I recently crunched some numbers and it was fascinating to see how the wines have performed over the years. Taking the average scores of the last 15 years (vintages 2008 to 2022) it was an absolute dead-heat between Latour and Mouton Rothschild, with Margaux, Haut Brion, La Mission Haut Brion, Cheval Blanc and then Pétrus just behind. The highest ranked “non-first growths” have been L’Eglise Clinet, Vieux Château Certan, Lafleur, Pichon Baron, Lynch Bages and Léoville Poyferré.
If we look at the last five years (2018 to 2022), Latour has just pipped Margaux for the top spot but the most impressive performer has probably been L’Eglise Clinet, coming in fourth place overall, despite the tragic loss of owner Denis Durantou in 2020.
Other big improvers in recent years have been:
The top-rated wines over the last 15 years have been:
If I had to pick the big Southwold Surprises and our Top Value wines (Under £30 per bottle ib in 2019), I would chose:
And if asked to pick the top vintages of the last ten years I would say:
The one thing that the Southwold tasting does do very well is re-enforce my view that Bordeaux is still very much the world’s greatest wine region. There are, of course, great highs all over the world of wine, but Bordeaux produces literally hundreds of world-class wines with remarkable differences between individual terroirs, appellations, wine-making styles and especially vintages. It also produces some terrific wines at modest prices as well as some of wine’s biggest-name superstars. As a very wise man once said to me: “Of course, you will always find amazing wines everywhere you travel along the road of wine, but you’ll always come back to Bordeaux.”
