For this year’s 2024 edition, I have left as few stones unturned as possible, drawing as extensively as I can both on recent tastings as well as the vinous vestiges of my own ‘cellar’ in these anniversary vintages. More importantly, I have tapped into a rich seam of expertise of fine wine-loving friends and writers who have been nowhere near a spittoon in the enjoyable product familiarisation of these wines from their own personal collections.
To gauge the popularity of different regions in the anniversary years for 2024, I asked wine trade global marketplace Liv-ex for a statistical breakdown of trade over the past five years according to vintage. The data showed the not-unexpected dominance of Bordeaux for most of the anniversary vintages, with proportions of overall trade value from about 30% to nearly 90% (for 1974). For the 1999s – 25th anniversaries this year, see p52 – Burgundy (reds 38%, whites 2%) outgunned Bordeaux, also coming within one percentage point (Burgundy 36.4% vs 37.2%) for the 1964 vintage. Champagne came in a creditable second for the 2004s (30.3% of trade vs Bordeaux’s 40.1%). Italy did reasonably well for the 2004 and 1964 vintages (11% and 19% respectively), and Port for 1994 (5.6%). Scotland putting in a nearly 5.6% contribution for 1974 was something I had to query – anomalously, it was down to the trade in rare Ladyburn single malt Scotch whisky.
I’ve made the point before, but the longer a wine spends in bottle, the more provenance and condition become paramount considerations. Champagne luminary and
