Echinosum
Posts: 598
Joined: 1/28/2021
From: Buckinghamshire, UK
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After 1961, we had to wait until 1982 for the next really excellent vintage in Bordeaux, and then they started coming much more frequently. The 1970s, indeed 1968 to 1981, was an overlong and unhappy decade for Bordeaux. It is often said that 1970 was the best year of the decade, but then the competition was very weak. Much of the rest of the more northerly vineyards in Europe had great vintages in 1971 and 1976, but the outcome was much less satisfactory in Bordeaux.
In 1990 I attended a 20-yr retrospective tasting of about a dozen 1970 wines from the Médoc. It was very underwhelming. That tasting included at least one wine from each of the 5 cru classé levels, though I later learned that Lafite was the most disappointing of the 1er cru classés that year. My come-away was, if that was what 20-yr-old wine from the best year of the 70s was like, I'll spend my money on Rhones and Australians, thank you. Though a friend introduced me to what nice ripe Bordeaux from the 80s was like, even from fairly modest properties, and my attitudes adjusted - but I stuck to good years.
But actually the best wines of the decade came from 1978. Though it doesn't really count, because the crop was practically wiped out, but what little survived was exceedingly good. Though pretty much unavailable. N Rhone '78s were similarly brilliant but almost unavailable.
1968 - Bad
1969 - Bad
1970 - A decent vintage, but not a great one - from 1961 you had to wait until 1982 for next one.
1971 - A difficult vintage with mixed results - most of the better wines came from the right bank. A big disappointment in view of what a great vintage it was not so far away, like Loire and Germany.
1972 - Dreadful
1973 - Bad, but just about OK enough that the occasional decent wine could be made
1974 - The worst vintage for a very long time
1975 - Over-tannic wines that rarely came around. A lot of excitement in early sales, after hot weather, but the vignerons didn't know how to handle it. Probably if repeated today, much better wine would be made.
1976 - Dilute, short-lived wines. Another massive disappointment after the hot summer that made brilliant wines in other parts of Europe. But Bordeaux got a deluge just before the vintage.
1977 - Dreadful
1978 - A tiny crop of truly excellent wines. The crop was mostly destroyed by bad spring weather. Sometimes called the miracle vintage, for what was made after the early destruction.
1979 - Acceptable but early drinking wines
1980 - Poor, short-lived
1981 - Acceptable but early drinking wines
If a producer of (at the time) rather modest reputation somehow made an excellent 1977, I would be inclined to ask, in as vague as way as possible, whether the contents of the bottle were entirely French. For That Kind Of Thing Used To Go On, and managed to continue for a while through night-time movements of contraband, albeit at a diminishing rate after it was Officially Put A Stop To. I had a similarly improbably excellent 1981 from Hermitage - which had its 1974 experience that year - from a second division producer, and I don't really mind. I searched out every bottle I could find of it. In some ways it was no bad thing that it did go on. If someone in Australia blended some wine from regions 1000s of km apart to make something good, we'd applaud. Perhaps transparency is better than illegality.
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A discriminating palate can be a curse.
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1970s vintages in Bordeaux - 
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