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.

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.  

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.  

Burgundy 2020: The Early Birds

After three weeks of tastings at fifty domanies across Burgundy, we are delighted to discover a 2020 vintage of records and surprises. Most wine-growers had never known such early picking dates – the very first pre-harvests beginning on the 17^th August - whilst for the majority of Domaines it was certainly the first time a vintage had started and ended in August. Even in the coolest, most northerly parts of the Côte de Nuits such as Marsannay, harvest was done and dusted by the 10^th of September. One of the driest years on record had also produced one of the smallest for reds. Flowering was largely successful but berries were small. Summer conditions were characterised by drought rather than heat, and this concentrated both sugars and acidities in the Pinot Noirs, resulting in reds of higher than average alcohols (broadly between 13.5% – 14.5%) and high acidities. When 2019 offered record-breaking analyses, no one would have guessed that just one  year later growers would once again proclaim that new boundaries had been broken in terms of the balance between alcohols and pHs.

24 of Burgundy’s greatest domaines tell our Buying Director what they think of 2019 and attempt to compare it to another vintage….. 

Please join us for an exploration of the wines of the Côte de Beaune and the Côte de Nuits in January with some of Burgundy's top winemaking talent. 

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