The guide to the best wines of the 1970 vintage
Are you looking for a wine from 1970 to mark an important date or celebrate a birthday? La Bouteille Dorée offers you a little practical guide to find your way around these old vintages and to find a bottle from 1970 that will really please its recipient.
Bordeaux 1970
After the formidable vintage of 1961, the years that followed were average, if not bad, such as 1967, 1968 and 1969 for the Bordeaux vineyards. 1970 came as a relief and the vintage was particularly well received by the critics. The climatic conditions were rather good, from flowering to harvest, thanks to a very hot and dry summer, some rain in August being welcome for the vines. It was also a vintage rich in quantity, which also reduced the quality of the wines, as the sorting of the grapes was much less developed at the time. The best wines were in red, the wines of Pomerol and the north of the Médoc, in Pauillac and Saint-Estèphe, and in white, the sweet wines of Sauternes, even if most of them have now passed their peak.
Burgundy 1970
Good climatic conditions with a beautiful summer from June to September made it possible to produce good quality wines in Burgundy in 1970 but, as in Bordeaux, the quantities were very large and overall, the quality of the wines suffered: supple and fruity wines in their youth but lacking the tannic structure to offer a long shelf life. The vast majority of them are past their prime.
Rhône 1970
The 1970 vintage was quite average in the Rhône Valley, except in the north, where the best wines from Côte-Rôtie and Hermitage did well.
Champagne 1970
A late flowering and a rainy month of June but a hot summer until the harvest made it possible to produce beautiful champagnes in this year 1970. Great vintage cuvées are unfortunately hard to find.
Other successes of 1970
You have to go abroad to find the other successes of 1970:
- In Italy, with the wines of Piedmont, Barolo and Barbaresco in the lead.
- In Spain, the 1970 vintage was excellent for Rioja wines, where more than 20% of the wines produced by the greatest producers (El Coto, Faustino, Martínez Bujanda, Salceda) were produced in Gran Reserva (aged in oak barrels for a minimum of 2 years and aged for at least 3 years in the bottle). They have now reached their peak and offer a lot of pleasure to taste.
- In the U.S.A., Californian wines of the 1970s bring back a painful memory for French wine lovers: the famous Judgement of Paris, a blind tasting of the greatest French and American wines, where a Californian red and white wine were placed at the top.
Find all the bottles of 1970 currently on stock
Find all the bottles from 1970 currently on sale at La Bouteille Dorée. All these wines from 1970 are in stock in our cellars and can be delivered in 24 hours throughout France and even within the day in Paris and 48 to 72 hours in most european countries. If you are looking for a particular bottle in the 1970 vintage, do not hesitate to contact us at info@labouteilledoree.com or at 01.46.22.29.79.