Neal Martin is one of the best wine writers going, and his writeup of the 2015 Burgfest blind tasting is typically witty and observant. But thought people would be particularly interested in his observation on terroir vs the influence of winemaking. The Burgfest tasting offers a particularly good opportunity to do that since it is organized as a bunch of horizontals of wines from the same vineyard, same vintage.
This tasting provides so much information, so many talking points, that I could go on ad nauseum examining the performance of each and every grower. Allow me to begin by stating something perhaps controversial but irrefutable. On paper, Burgfest is an examination of terroir, since flights are organized by vineyard. The mantra is that great wine is made in the vineyard, a priori, vineyard site is the determining factor. If only that romantic idea were true. If Burgfest proves one thing, year after year, it is that winemakersâ decisions throughout the entire process, from bud-break to bottling, tend to override the sway of terroir. How you prune, whether you de-leaf, whether you farm biodynamically or with chemicals, when you decide to pick, how much you sort the fruit, add stems or de-stem, chaptalize or acidify, how much new oak you elect to use. Sorry to bust the myth, but these multiple decisions shape the wine to a greater degree than whether this vineyard has a bit more limestone than that one. The juxtaposition of these wines at Burgfest reveals so much about decisions made by the winemaker because Burgundies are more sensitive than Bordeaux. Sometimes varicolored flights suggested the wines came from different countries, let alone exactly the same vineyard. See the evidence below. These are the five Clos Saint-Jacques, same walled vineyard and same vintage, all adjacent to each other.
Check out the article if you want to see the photo of some very different colored CSJs along with with a good writeup of 2015.