Leap Year Vintage Wines

2024 is one of those rare years in which an extra day, February 29th, is added to the calendar to sync dates with the Earth’s orbit of the sun.

In honor of this quadrennial Leap Year tradition, Sotheby’s Wine is pleased to present a selection of outstanding cuvées from great Leap Year vintages in recent history. This wide-ranging collection includes First Growth Bordeaux, vintage Champagne, Burgundy, Barolo, and other regional standouts distinguished as much by their fantastic pedigree as their place in an intercalary year.

The last Leap Year vintage, 2020, was in many places a challenging season for winemakers but nonetheless produced an array of extraordinary wines, like the early-harvested yet generously ripe Almaviva from Chile’s Maipo Valley.

In Champagne, 2004 was a vintage of classical balance, producing benchmark cuvées like the silky and refined Dom Pérignon featured here.

A revelatory library vintage, the 1996 Château Latour is a Bordeaux release for the ages—a big, firmly structured, savory Left Bank masterpiece that promises to drink well for many Leap Years to come!