The vintage

2012

Small crops, good wine

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The 2012 vintage, rated

Small crops, good wine

In 2026 a bottle from 2012 marks a 14th birthday or anniversary

The vintage

Excellent · 4/5

A difficult growing season saved by a fine late summer. Bordeaux is good on the Right Bank, sound in the Médoc; Burgundy lost much of its crop to hail and frost, but what remained is concentrated and very good in both colours. Champagne 2012 is excellent. The Rhône is very good, Piedmont and Tuscany good, and Germany made lovely wines.

What we would buy, and why

A vintage Champagne 2012 makes a festive fourteenth-birthday bottle and is drinking well now. Burgundy 2012 is scarce because the crop was tiny, so expect to pay for it; Pomerol or Saint-Émilion 2012 gives good Bordeaux at a fair price. As always with a year of small crops, provenance matters more than the label - ask where it has been.

2012 in the world

London hosted the Olympic Games in the summer. In August the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, and in October Felix Baumgartner stepped out of a capsule twenty-four miles up and fell to Earth faster than sound.

Best bets for 2012

  • Vintage Champagne 2012 - an excellent year
  • Red Burgundy 2012 - a small crop, concentrated wines
  • Right Bank Bordeaux 2012 - the better side that year
  • Northern Rhône 2012 - very good Syrah

How we grade a bottle

Fill level, label, capsule and cork, then provenance. Every bottle is checked by hand by people who have handled thousands of old bottles, and we write down the flaws as well as the good news. What the fill levels mean · How to choose a birth-year wine

Real people, not a chatbot

Ask a person about this year

The people who answer are the same people who check and pack the bottles. Ask for photographs, a condition report or advice on a year and you get a straight answer from the ANNO team, Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 18:00 CET.