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Bordeaux 2025 en primeur: Sauternes & Barsac ‘very rich, very powerful’

14 May 2026 By Colin Hay

db Bordeaux correspondent Colin Hay’s tour of the 2025 en primeur releases comes to its customary sticky end – in Sauternes and Barsac.

There’s something inevitable about it. Eventually all roadshows have to come to an end and, paradoxically perhaps, all the best en primeur roadshows tend to come to a sticky end – in Sauternes and Barsac. Let’s be honest, there are worse places to finish up.

Indeed, it is particularly important to me that I do not sign off on my en primeur coverage without paying appropriate attention to these unique but often overlooked wines.

2025 here is a good, if not perhaps exceptional, vintage. There’s plenty of botrytis and, for the fourth vintage in a row, decent yields too (as the following table shows clearly). There’s also a tonne of residual sugar, typically in excess of 140g/l for the premiers grands crus classés. But therein lies the little nagging doubt I have. For these wines are very rich, very powerful and some of them lack just the additional modicum of compensating freshness that would render them truly memorable.

	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	10-year average
Sauternes & Barsac	13.6	12.3	3.5	14.1	12.2	12.7	12.6	13.8
Barsac	—		1.5	13.4	12.0	11.5	12.2	13.4
Sauternes	—		4.0	14.7	12.4	13.0	12.7	14.4

Table 1: Average vineyard yield, Sauternes & Barsac (hl/ha)

Source: calculated from Duanes data compiled by the CIVB Service Economie et Etudes

That said, there are plenty of stars and those stars shine very brightly indeed – most notably, the truly exceptional pair of L’Extravagant de Doisy Daëne and Suduiraut.

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Lafaurie-Peyraguey, too, has crafted a brilliant and thoroughly memorable wine – the latest in what is now a very impressive series.

And I love too de Fargues and the return to brilliance of a seemingly rather more terroir-focused Clos Haut-Peyraguey.

As ever, there is great value to be found in practically all these wines. But if I were to point you in the direction of a handful, it would be difficult to look past the staggeringly original Doisy Dubroca and the brilliantly authentic trio of Nairac, Bastor-Lamontagne and Cantegril.