As has become an annual ritual, I am lobbing in some thoughts on the 2022 Burgundies after two weeks of visits whilst on the plane ride home.
In my notes, I don’t know how many times I followed my more nuanced/detailed impressions with a bottom line of : Delicious. I said it a ton like a doll that you pull the string in the back and it repeats the same phrase, but I believe that the 2022s will please just about everyone, burgundy aficionados and I-know-nothing-give-me-something-wet-and-tasty-please drinkers alike. Quality is quite homogenous in general, with a consistency and quality that is wonderful. I do not think that 2023 will be that way, much more heterogeneous…
The red wines have a juiciness and vibrancy (gouleyant is a good French word) that is medium with a shade plus in concentration, certainly not what one would have expected given the hot dry conditions of the summer. I think that this due to a handful of factors, including:
-the vines shutting down in the hottest/driest part of the summer in mid July to mid August which acted like pumping the brakes on metabolic processes
-the size of the crop that dispersed the energy to mo’ babies on the vine
-both producers and the vines themselves are adapting to what seems like the new “normal” of hot and dry. The primordial importance of picking timing, increasingly to preserve freshness, has been put to the foreground in the new “normal”.
There is a full spectrum of fruit flavors, mostly redder than black, with a kind of moderation and “classicism” in their overall architecture. The wines very clearly reflect their origins, with a clear sense of site specific typicity. The ever important element of house style also affects the red vs black fruit qualities, as does the typicity of the site in question.
Structurally, the wines have good acidity, again of a certain moderation that is neither dominant nor tender/soft. One note that I repeatedly sensed and mentioned is that clay rich/cooler sites that found their tannin completely melted in 2019 and 2020 were not that way in 2022. Such sites most often have the kind of chewy, powdery tannin that i’ve come to historically expect from clay dominant, slower-to-phenolically ripen soils, which is more “classical” in my estimation.
Red wine alcohols are usually hovering in the low 13% range, 13.5% max, generally speaking.
The game of “what vintage does this remind you of?” had answers like “the digeste drinkability of 2021 with the sense of fruit concentration of 2019”, or a more concentrated version of 2017/2014. If you like red Burgundy, I imagine that any of those comparisons will prime your yum yum (miam miam in French) expectation engines.
In white, a similar sense of harmonized balance and deliciousness pervades. Typicity is very well reflected in general. There is body, freshness, a certain sense of tension of elements (and not the newer fashionable we-pick-super-early-and-have-intense-acid-and-reduction-but-let’s-call-it-minerality variety), in a gentler-rather-than-laser-beam vein.
From everyone that I can recall speaking to on the matter of pricing, without exception I was told that the intention is to keep pricing at the same level as 2021, meaning no price increases for the both 2022 and 2023. Bon, if the 2024 crop is eviscerated by an alien invasion, French civil war, or the new perennial vilain Dr Frost, they may raise their prices as a result. The back-to-back healthy size crops of 2022 and 2023 (sometimes outrageously productive in 2023…) should replenish both winery stocks and the foaming-at-the-mouth marketplace, and calm things down a bit. Time will tell what will come of the seemingly insatiable market appetite for Burgundy, particularly given the shadow of what feels like an impending/occuring global financial crisis. Some markets are already showing signs of distress, particularly China.
I tasted wines from 15 or so estates in the Maconnais, and in general, the wines are far far softer than the wines in the Côte d’Or. They are similarly clean in their fruit, but most often fairly boring. There are exceptions, but…
My summary categorizations are to be taken with a grain of salt, as always. Oh those pesky details details details…
I love love love my partner vignerons. I don’t really know how to separate friendship and business, relational holism is how I do. Even though I see them for an hour or so per year, the exchanges that we have feel so densely packed with meaning and relational intensity, of shared passion and values, that it is remarkably powerful/inspiring. I am most grateful to be able to do what I do, and most grateful for their trust and fellowship. I am equally most grateful for all of you crazy wine goons out there supporting me in my endeavors, and I hope that the give and take is of equilibrium, or even that I am able to give to you even more than you give to me…
Ta ta for now. I’ll chime in with other thoughts as impulse and boredom strikes me.
One Love.
robert
. We loved the wines we tasted on our visits in Champagne and cote de beaune (all white burgs…). Just hope all the ones I liked will be findable and priced at a reasonable rate which will probably not be the case. CHEER Robert - will be nice to see your impressions/notes.