The burgfest team convened earlier in the summer to assess the 2018 White Burgundy vintage in bottle.

Burgfest is a crack team of 10 Burgundy specialists, a mixture of wine merchant buyers and journalists, gathered in the peaceful setting of the wonderful Hameau de Barboron just outside of Savigny Les Beaune.

The tasting gives the lucky participants a unique perspective on a vintage; the ability to taste 1ers and Grands Crus from the top producers, both established and up and coming, from right across the Cote d’Or and Chablis, is a privilege not lost on the tasters – tasting 4 Montrachets or a flight of 8 Chevaliers Montrachets side by side is certainly not a responsibility taken lightly. The wines are tasted in flights grouped by village and then by single vineyard (if enough samples to form a flight will allow) or failing that are grouped by style / location of vineyard – eg high slope Chassagnes.   However, thereafter the identities of the wines and producers are not known. Tastings are in the mornings only, to avoid palate fatigue, to allow group discussion and also to give tasters time to formulate as accurate and reasoned a view, wine by wine, as possible.  

Red Burgundy retrospective

A September check-in on the 2018 red Burgundies proved a fascinating, and at times, thrilling five days of tasting. I had not tasted the vintage so extensively since the Autumn of 2019 and so I was delighted to find as many good wines as I did then, from barrel; if anything I came away even more enthused than my initial impressions allowed me. Many of the wines have found a calmness and balance I had not broadly predicted at the time: alcohols were a little less dominant and bold tannins, though still very much a feature of the vintage, were better matched to the fruit.  There is no doubting this is a big, powerful vintage, of course, but they seem to have settled into themselves and feel a bit less daunting. Whilst it is clearly one of the less consistent red vintages of the last few years, lack of freshness or predominance of brett being the two major pitfalls, there were so many wines I loved; many wines I could seem myself enjoying earlier in their life than I had imagined. Be selective but don’t miss the 2018s, embrace their exuberance and boldness, you won’t regret it.  

Triumph over adversity

A vintage full of jewel-like wines that have emerged from a growing season that was never plain sailing. After a devastating early spring frost, growers had to work harder than ever, all the while bringing in some of their smallest crops on record.

It is hard to know where to start when writing up a region as complex and varied as Burgundy, but if you’ll allow us an opening generalisation, it is this; we love this vintage. Indeed, if we strip away recent solaire vintages and position the wines of 2021 in the wider pantheon of Burgundy years, it is hard to see how this wouldn't be considered a very good, at times great vintage. The only real downside is that there’s so little to go around.