Extraordinary September weather may have rescued the 2014 Burgundy wine harvest from disaster, ripening ‘intensely aromatic’ whites and ‘concentrated’ reds.
Devastating hailstorms earlier this year left vignerons gloomy about the prospects for 2014. Up to 40% of the vines in Meursault, Pommard, Volnay and Beaune were destroyed by ‘golf-ball sized hailstones’ in June, with worse damage in other communes.
But September’s fine weather – there has been only 5mm of rain so far – has brought on both reds and whites and harvesting should be finished by the middle of next week.
‘The Chardonnay is fantastic, ripe with lots of acidity,’ Domaine Faiveley technical director Jerome Flous told Decanter.com. ‘The Pinot Noir is concentrated with thick skins; they have a good balance of acidity and alcohol but the fruit is tight. It will be a classic Burgundy vintage, good for ageing. The only problem is quantity. There is a low skin to juice ratio.’
At Maison Louis Latour, which owns 50ha in the Cote d’Or, estate manager Boris Champy said, ‘the whites are very, very good. They are intensely aromatic, but it is difficult to extract the juice.’
Burgundy’s wine trade body, the BIVB, said 2014 could produce a more ‘normal’ amount of wine - around 1.5m hectolitres - following three consecutive small harvests in 2011, 2012 and 2013. But, there is strong variation between areas.
‘Some vineyards are having a full harvest, some have had millerandage and small grapes,’ said the BIVB’s Cecile Mathiaud. ‘And of course, there are the vineyards in North Cote de Beaune and North Maconnais that have lost a lot with the hail,’ she added.
‘The equivalent of one entire crop is actually missing in Burgundy’, said Faiveley’s export director, Vincent Avenel.
‘Prices tend to increase in this kind of situation,’ he added, especially as demand is high. > >
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For the 2013 vintage, which is just being bottled and will be released en primeur this November, price increases will be ‘probably +3% to +15%, depending on the appellation and quantities available,’ he said.
Read more at > Burgundy 2014: September heatwave set to save vintage - Decanter
and some to pick the wrong grapes;
Not surprising, after watching A Year In Burgundy (streaming in the US on Netflix: Rent Movies and TV Shows on DVD and Blu-ray - DVD Netflix). In one of the vineyards, they pointed out the only thing that labeled one winemaker’s rows from another was a nondescript cloth flag.
C’est incroyable!
I thought the weather in Burgundy was very good all year except for the few areas hit by hail. Am I incorrect? And how would extraordinary weather in September help the areas hit by hail?
Not according to Clive
September 2014
The more 2014 advances, the more depressing it gets. As I have written, June was fine until the terrible storm at the end of the month. July was not too bad. Some hot days alternating with the wet and windy. But August temperatures have struggled to reach 20° C, while it has continued to rain if not every day, at least in most of them. It is the cold which worries me. The fruit will eventually ripen – this is the progress of Nature. But in an absence of heat there will be no concentration; tannins will remain green, and the wines will lack generosity. And the risk of rot will be high.
We need, ungently, an Indian Summer. Keep your fingers crossed.
August 1st 2014The weather in July has been mixed. Warm, even hot, sunny periods have alternated with the cool and cloudy. Rainfall has been high, and even when it was fine there were frequent echoes of thunder in the distance. Thankfully, however, these have not translated to any further hail damage; though there are reports of fruit being scorched by the hot sun where the end of June hail damage led to a lack of leaf protection over the fruit. Additionally, both oïdium and mildew have threatened. It has not been an easy summer. Now it is holiday time, but such is the fragile state of the vines, most vacances will be petit rather than grand: a token respite only.
We know already that 2014 will be a short crop, though larger in the Côte de Nuits than the Côte de Beaune. Whether the quality will be high or only medium will depend on the weather over the next six weeks.
July 1st, 2014I was just about to type: ‘so far, so good’, for the weather in June has been splendid, when in the early evening of Saturday 28th June a severe thunderstorm ravaged Volnay, Pommard and Meursault – the usual communes, recent history would suggest. There is lesser damage, but damage nonetheless, in the Côte de Nuits in Vosne and Chambolle. The full extent of all this will not be exactly clear for a week or so. But it certainly seems worse in the Côte d’Or than further south.
Prior to this the vines flowered swiftly, evenly and quite precociously in the first week of June and until this last week-end escaped any subsequent battering by wind, rain or hail.
The June weather has been largely dry and warm, and sometimes quite hot – I define hot as 30° and above, and there were at least a dozen days as high as this - reducing to a minimum any danger of coulure or mildew. Until this last week-end, therefore, following the satisfyingly abundant sortie, it was looking as if we might well have the quantity the wine economy is desperately in need of. Now, of course, we shall have to wait and see.
Currently projections suggest that the harvest should begin on September 8th (which is a Monday).
June 1st 2014After three very small harvests what Burgundy urgently needs in 2014 is quantity. These days vintages seriously deficient in quality are, thankfully, very rare. With modern methods such as triage (sorting through of the fruit on arrival at the winery) what we find are rich, concentrated, full-bodied vintages for the long term, on the one hand, or lighter, but frequently equally fragrant, balanced and elegant wines for drinking sooner, on the other. Look back over the last decade. Even in 2004, on which I shall report more fully in a few weeks after my regular 10 Year On tasting, there are plenty of agreeable wines, and this vintage is regarded as the worst of the decade.
So far – but keep your fingers firmly crossed – 2014 promises at least reasonable volume. There was no winter to speak of, and February, March and most of April were mild, sunny and largely dry. This encouraged an early development of the vine. It even looked at one stage as if we could anticipate a harvest in the last days of August. The last six weeks, however, have been cool and quite wet - we needed a bit of rain – and this has retarded the vine’s progress. There are no flowers as yet. At this stage we can expect picking to start in mid-September. Let’s just hope that the Burgundy vineyard escapes the storm and hail damage that ravaged the crops of 2011, 2012 and 2013.
Meanwhile, what of 2013? The malo-lactic fermentations have been very slow to take place. Indeed there some, as I write, which have not even yet begun. So for even the experienced taster assessing the 2013s is as yet a bit of a mug’s game. The wines appear to have decent volume and attractive, nicely pure fruit. Perhaps the whites, for once, are better than the reds. But it is best to wait until the autumn and taste the wines then.
A lot more details on the harvest can be found on Bill Nanson’s site:
He doesn’t have nice words for the Decanter’s report though…
Long time wine industry veteran, Jerome Hasenphlug, is now living in Puligny-Montrachet and is writing a great new blog. Best and most up-to-date vintage reporting I’ve see. Highly recommended.
John, thanks for that link to Jerome’s site. Wow, that’s great stuff.
Vincent
Your welcome, Vincent. I worked with Jerome for many years when he was with Chateau & Estate and later Palm Bay. He’s a real bright bulb and is now living his dream.
As if they haven’t suffered enough, now this.
There has been widespread talk, and a bit of quiet fear, of a new pest that has arrived in the Pinot Noir vineyards of Burgundy. I have heard a lot of discussion about drosophila suzukii, the invasive species of fruit fly that has been found in several vineyards. The flies thrive in heat and humidity, particularly in places where the air is stagnant, without much wind. The flies puncture the ripening fruit, introducing a vinegar yeast to the bunch, and can decimate surrounding vines quite rapidly, turning wine grapes to vinegar juice.
For many growers, 2014 marks the first year of this new pest, and I heard varying comments on its presence, effects, and vectors. Everyone agrees that the issue is localized in small parcels this year, mainly in the Cote de Nuits, but reported to be quite problematic in the Cote Chalonaise as well. Many maintain that heat, insufficient ventilation, and humidity are causes, and point to parcels where leaves were not pulled from the fruit before harvest, especially in the lower, frequently wetter areas.
Twice this year I picked the wrong grapes. And both times it wasn’t even Zinfandel (which is what I should have been picking) but neighboring Cabernet Sauvignon. I usually pick at the crack of dawn so in both cases I was groggy and not fully awake and then a few after a little bit I started thinking “why are these berries so small…oh shit…”. Luckily I realized my mistake fairly quickly in both cases but I felt like such a dork to do it twice with the wrong varietal.
Maxime Cheurlin told me that he lost about a third of his Beaumonts to the little buggers.
He mentioned that Givry had been hit hard.
“When was the last time you mistook cabernet for zin?”
“Not since before breakfast.”
“After three very small vintages what Burgundy urgently needs in 2014 is quantity,” wrote Clive Coates MW on 1 June. With much of the harvest in, his prayers may have been answered, up to a point. “We’re talking quality and enough of it to stabilise the market and take the pressure off pricing,” said Jasper Morris MW, speaking from Burgundy.
As the man in charge of the region for Berry Bros & Rudd, Morris is particularly impressed with the whites. “They look really great, and it’s a long time I have seen grapes of this quality with excellent sugar levels and good acidity.” The quantity of Côtes de Beaune reds has suffered, particularly in Beaune, Volnay and Pommard, due to devastating hail storms on 26 June. Grégory Patriat, winemaker at Jean-Claude Boisset, put the losses in Beaune at around 80%, with Mersault down 50%. He said: “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Dropsophila suzukii - note the Burgundy red headDropsophila suzukii – note the Burgundy red head
For some villages it is the eighth hail attack in 10 years, and insurance premiums have gone through the roof. “Some people are closing down because they don’t have the means to pay,” said Charles Lachaux of Domaine Arnaud-Lachaux. While the Côtes de Nuits escaped relatively unscathed, losing no more than 5% of its vineyards, Grand Crus like Clos Vougeot, Richebourg and Échezeaux lost 20 – 35%, claimed Lachaux. In August a new vinegar fly (drosophila suzukii) made an unwelcome appearance in some of the red vineyards.
“It’s going to be a good harvest – the weather was great,” said Lachaux, who finished picking on Wednesday, 14 September. “But we’re not in Bordeaux where every year’s the ‘vintage of the century’. In Burgundy it’s going to be a fresh easy-drinking vintage.”
http://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2014/09/burgundy-breathes-a-sigh-of-relief:
"A turnaround in the weather means producers in Burgundy have quantity as well as quality in this year’s harvest.
By Panos Kakaviatos | Posted Thursday, 25-Sep-2014
Many Burgundy vintners finished picking earlier this week and Claude Chevalier, president of the BIVB said that yields are “almost back to normal” following a string of lower-than-average production vintages.
At his own Burgundy estate – Domaine Chevalier in Ladoix-Serrigny – Chevalier said: “The berries have good concentration, with phenolic ripeness”, and – importantly – there were plenty of them.
Related stories:
Hail Crushes Hopes for Bumper Burgundy Vintage
Burgundy Vineyards Experiment with Anti-Hail Nets
France Looking Forward to Bigger and Better Wine Harvest
At the sorting table, they had rejected some unripe grapes and just a few gave off slight vinegar aromas of acetic rot – a result of the unexpectedly high number of Drosophila suzukii “vinegar flies” that struck vineyards during the September harvest.
“They love cherries and, because the cherry season lasted a long time, the flies stuck around to attack grapes in September,” Chevalier said. Furthermore, temperatures in the high 20s (mid 80s F) favored their presence from the end of August through to the harvest, he explained.
Overall about 1.45 million hectoliters (38.3m gallons) of wine is expected from Burgundy, from Chablis to the Mâconnais, while the average vintage yields 1.5m hectoliters. This figure takes into account higher-than-average production in the Côte de Nuits, but a drop in production in much of the Côte de Beaune and the Mâconnais due to a terrible hailstorm in late June.
Cool temperatures and well-above-average rain in July and August would prevent 2014 from being an “exceptional” vintage, said Sylvain Pitiot of Clos de Tart in Morey-Saint-Denis, in the Côte de Nuits. But the three weeks of hot and sunny days in September “really did save the harvest”, he said and “we should have a very good vintage”.
“Flowering was early and we had no hail damage, but July and August were not good – to say the least,” explained Pitiot, who said that he has had to clear leaves and aerate the grape bunches to prevent the spread of botrytis, and carry out a green harvest, but still ended up with more than 13 percent potential alcohol. He finished harvesting on September 22.
Thierry Brouin of neighboring Clos des Lambrays finished the harvest on September 18, reaching the “desired degrees” of between 11.8 and 12.3 percent potential alcohol. Like Pitiot, he green harvested in July. He also reported botrytis in early August, but “it did not spread and did not become as prevalent as it was in 2013”.
“We had so many grapes for once,” Brouin remarked, “and did not have to be nearly as choosy this year, reaching 35 hectoliters per hectare [2.6 tons per acre].” In 2013, the estate mustered 20 hl/ha.
Brouin also reported “unprecedented” amounts of vinegar flies. “Three weeks before the harvest we had to do a ‘pink harvest’ to remove grapes that were not ripe enough or that were affected by acetic rot,” he said.
Côte de Beaune vintners harvested healthy grapes but hail damage from the massive June 28 hailstorm drastically reduced the harvest. Thiébault Huber of Domaine Huber-Verdereau reported 60 percent below-average production for Volnay and losses of up to 80 percent among his premier cru Pommard vines, but the hail made bunches less compact and, in that sense, had a “positive effect” to limit botrytis spreading in the cold, wet summer.
“The main surprise” of 2014, Huber predicted, would be the whites.
© Panos Kakaviatos|Thiébault Huber
Although hail damage meant much less quantity in several appellations – for example 50-55 percent below average in Meursault – “they seem magnificent” in part because ideal ripening in September matched naturally high acidities from the cool summer.
In Beaune, Alex Gambal of the eponymous estate, said that the “whites are more consistent” than the reds with potential alcohol of 13 percent and “a better balance” of acidity and ripeness. And in appellations less affected by the hail, such as Saint-Aubin, Puligny and Chassagne-Montrachet, “you will see quantity as well as quality”, Gambal added.
Reports from William Fèvre in Chablis on September 22 indicated high quality too, with low levels of rot and oidium and a very fine balance between acidity and ripeness. Some poor fruit-set meant that quantities, although higher than in 2013, would not be as high as hoped."