I am sorry, I typed it wrong and will fix it. I was commenting on 2014 vs. 2017. 2004 was the worst vintage of the last 20 years or more.
I have not stopped buying but I am buying much fewer Burgs than 2010 and before and am buying wines I will be able to drink earlier - a lot of red Chassagne Montrachet in recent vintages. I am 66, have way too much wine and the prices of wines are going up too much. My top vintages in terms of bottles owned for red Burgundy are 2005 followed by 2010. I used to have a lot of 1999s but they are starting to dwindle a lot.
Exactly! Just in terms of chemistry, none of the big trio of '18, '19 or '20 are really comparable to 2003, where acidities were almost non-existent and pHs very high. In 2018 and 2019, pHs are above average but not extremely high, and in 2020 pHs are actually quite low.
Beyond any considerations of chemistry, suggestive though those are, the best growers are doing a better job of protecting fruit and vines from heat and sunburn (hedging less/higher, not systematically deleafing, working the soils more intelligently), harvesting in a timely fashion, and keeping fruit cool before it is processed. They have a lot more experience of vinifying high sugar musts, and of maturing higher pH wines.
All of this makes me very optimistic about the likely evolution of these wines vis a vis the 2003s (and indeed the more extreme 1990s, which can be a bit roasted in profile these days).
As others have observed, the extremely positive evolution of many red 2009s, which today often taste younger than their 2010 counterparts, is also cause for optimism.
While Burgundy is perhaps uniquely good at producing interesting, high quality wines in years of marginal maturity (as the best 2021s are going to remind us), ripe grapes remain the leading desideratum for producing great wine.
As for the Mugnier 2016 Maréchale, it’s an atypically concentrated wine due to yields being heavily reduced by frost that year. It sounds as if it hasn’t shut down. But 2016 was far from being a sunny, high-ripeness vintage, so aside from its unusual mid-palate density, it’s hard to reconcile its inclusion in a list of jammy, over-ripe Burgundies. The 2018 is also a somewhat atypical wine, having being hailed twice, and it is indeed rather chewy and unusually high octane; but in those respects it isn’t representative of what Mugnier produced in 2018.
****As others have observed, the extremely positive evolution of many red 2009s, which today often taste younger than their 2010 counterparts, is also cause for optimism. ****
I agree whole totally with the above comments. Merci…
Thank you William, that is some excellent and detailed information.
I too was surprised to find that Mugnier 16’ tasting so heavy last week, when it was among my favorite 16’s tasted a couple years ago. I think 16’ was a good vintage that was overshadowed by 15’ and I am glad to have bought my 16s.