The guide to the best wines of the 1981 vintage
Are you looking for a wine from 1981 to mark an important date or celebrate an anniversary? La Bouteille Dorée offers you a little practical guide to find your way around these old vintages and to find a bottle from 1981 that will really please its recipient.
Bordeaux 1981
The 1981 vintage was marked by very good weather conditions and was unfortunately followed by heavy rains during the harvest. As a result, red wines are less concentrated and must now be drunk. The sweet white wines benefited from the rains in October and offer beautiful emotions in the best châteaux of Sauternes and Barsac.
The rare successes of 1981
Difficult climatic conditions meant that in Burgundy, 1981 was a disappointing vintage to be forgotten due to repeated rains and hail on the vineyard throughout the summer and until the harvest. The same was true in the northern Rhône Valley, where the vintage was marred by the violent rains that fell during the harvest before the grapes were fully ripe, resulting in rather green and rather meagre wines. It is therefore necessary to turn to:
- The south of the Rhône Valley where the best estates of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Gigondas have produced beautiful wines that are still very pleasant.
- Champagne where 1981 is a small vintage in quantity due to the frost in May and June but where beautiful vintages from the best houses offer elegant champagnes that can be tasted with pleasure.
- Alsace with a rather successful 1981 vintage, the Alsatian vineyard having avoided spring frosts and then benefiting from favourable conditions apart from a violent hailstorm which destroyed several hundred hectares. The harvest is therefore not abundant and bottles are rare today, but the best sweet wines offer nice surprises.
Some great successes are to be noted outside France: in Italy (Wines of Piedmont and Tuscany) and in Spain where 1981 is an excellent vintage for Rioja wines and today offers wines with perfect maturity and which, for the best, can still be kept for a few years in the cellar.