I’ve been waiting for this since 2024 when I proposed to Hart. Unfortunately the EP 2024 came around and the vintage was, eh. Dreadful. So came the wait for EP2025, given our wedding year.

I was tracking the vintage reports coming outta Bordeaux almost monthly from March 2025. Budding was healthy, but came the ridiculously hot summer… oh no….. ruined. Solar vintages are terrible for my meek and wimpy palate.

Thankfully, the wine gods took pity: THE rains came in end Aug. But I was still super worried – this was right before the harvest, and who knows if this was enough to rescue the vintage.

Thankfully, the barrel tastings and stats this year came out fantastic:
– Expected: full ripeness
– somewhat surprising: freshness and low pH
– the shocker for me: that VERY classical 13-13.5% abv I seem to be seeing everywhere.

Anyway, part 1 concludes my buying of wines that I deliberately wanted to grab cases of. Well except for the Domaine de Chevalier Blanc; that was a mistake.
There were a couple others that I REALLY wanted (Margaux is top, Ducru Beaucaillou, Montrose, Palmer) but I was unfortunately outta budget (cries violently inside), and still had to account for some loose bottles to hunt for.

Part 2 is my hunt for these bottles: Margaux, Mouton, Haut Brion, La Mission Haut Brion, Palmer, Cheval Blanc, Pavie or Angelus.