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Château Méaume Opens 60 Consecutive Vintages
On 1st August 2026, Château Méaume opened sixty consecutive Bordeaux vintages, spanning 1966 to 2025.
Seventy guests joined us for a private tasting that ran for six hours. They travelled from France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States to share a rare occasion at the estate.
The aim was simple. Put six decades of wine on the table. Taste them side by side. See what they had to say.
For Château Méaume, it was a chance to look back across a long period of family ownership, changing seasons, vineyard work and winemaking. For those in the room, it was a chance to taste a run of Bordeaux wines few people will ever experience.
Sixty years in one evening
The tasting began at 6pm with an introduction to the estate, its history and the task ahead.
Forty-nine of the wines came from Château Méaume’s own cellar. They covered every vintage from 1977 to 2025, taking in the period under Alan Johnson-Hill and then Mark and Sandra Johnson Hill.
The first eleven years, from 1966 to 1976, came from two neighbouring Saint-Émilion châteaux. Together, the bottles created one unbroken sequence of sixty Bordeaux harvests.
It gave everyone in the room a direct view of how this part of Bordeaux has changed over time.
There were differences in weather. Changes in vineyard planting. New approaches in the cellar. Better and harder years. Some wines showed remarkable freshness, others were showing their age.
A tasting like this should not only celebrate the famous vintages. It should show the full picture.
The wines guests talked about
The most widely favoured wines of the evening were 2009, 2005, 1998 and 1989.
The strength of 2009 and 2005 came as no surprise. Both are widely recognised as excellent Bordeaux years, and both showed the depth, balance and life people hoped for.
The real talking points were 1998 and 1989.
The 1998 was repeatedly discussed by guests throughout the evening. It is a strong Right Bank vintage and, nearly three decades on, it showed why well-made Bordeaux can be worth waiting for.
The 1989 was another quiet success. It had maturity, but it also had energy. It reminded everyone that a good bottle does not need to be young to give real pleasure.
Bottles from 1989, 1998, 2005 and 2009 were among the first to be finished.
Several of the most celebrated wines, including 1982, 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2022, were poured from magnums. Larger bottles tend to age more slowly, giving the wine more time to develop while holding onto its freshness.
Not every year is a great year
The tasting was not designed to make every wine look good.
The wines from the 1970s generally showed their age more clearly than those from the 1960s. Apart from the highly regarded 1970 vintage, the decade is not usually seen as one of Bordeaux’s strongest.
That honesty made the better bottles stand out even more.
When wines are tasted one after another across six decades, you see more than a list of popular years. You see the effect of time. You see what careful winemaking can do. You also see that every harvest brings its own challenges.
Three guests took the challenge further than most. They tasted every wine opened during the evening and chose not to spit...
By the later vintages, after a very long evening and a great many wines, their tasting notes had become understandably shorter!
A family story
The evening followed the sixtieth birthday of Château Méaume proprietor, Mark Johnson-Hill.
Mark’s connection with the estate began almost fifty years ago, during childhood visits to Bordeaux. The château has now been owned by the same English family for more than fifty years.
That family connection is part of what made the evening matter.
“This tasting was about seeing the full story,” said Mark Johnson-Hill. “That includes the great years, the difficult years and the surprises that only appear when wines are tasted together across such a long period of time.
“What stood out was how well some of the older wines performed. The 1998 and 1989, in particular, reminded everyone that a good Bordeaux can give enormous pleasure many years after it was made.
“It was also wonderful to welcome people from so many countries to share a very special moment for Château Méaume.”
Preserving the record
The full tasting was professionally filmed.
That film will become a permanent archive of sixty consecutive Bordeaux vintages, preserving this part of Château Méaume’s story for future generations.
Every bottle reflected the same small area of Bordeaux. Every bottle came from a particular year. Together, they showed what can happen when one estate, one family and one way of making wine are given enough time.