I have been in Burgundy for several days and will have tasted by Friday at 16 domaines.
To date, there is a similar theme.
A vintage of extraordinary acidities. Most older vignerons haven’t seen a vintage like this. Probably have to go back to one of the 1940’s or 1950’s vintages.
Because of the acidities, malos are just now starting or are in the middle.
Unlike 09 which has basically made itself, this vintage had VERY long primary fermentations and delayed malolactic fermentations. Only a minority are finished at this point.
There are some fantastic wines in this vintage. Lots of energy. Much different than 2007 though in that the wines are very tense with a few exceptions. (Of course, it is difficult now because the malos are so delayed to taste.)
I mention these things because all of the critics are coming in the next couple of weeks. Very few wines are finished. Only Paul Pernot seems to have been able to bottle to date but the whites in general are handling the acidity well.
I would love to hear some comments on a couple of things.
Since the malos aren’t finished, how are the critics going to get a handle on this vintage for their next publications?
09 is going to be very special. There is no doubt. What will this do to this sandwich vintage which will be vins de garde?
For what I have heard : the white will be truly exceptional and will remain most probably superior to the coming 2009 which will be an unique red vintage.
Now, we have to be carefull. The question of oxydation is still in discussion here in Burgundy.
Do I remember correctly? I thought, from my visit there several years ago, that many of the burgundy wineries did not do 100% malos, if they did it at all. Is that still the case? If so, some of the wines may be ready sooner.
Your news is not good news to me, as I always have a hard time assessing wines when they are in malo. I am always astonished at Michel Bettane’s methodology of tasting the young vintage of Burgundy, as he insists on having samples prepared and sent to him while the wines are often still in malo. He must be a much more accomplished taster than I to ascertain the quality of the wines at such a point in their evolutions, as I have a very difficult time with them at this stage. However, late malos sounds to me like a potentially beneficial characteristic for the ultimate quality of the wines, as the first recent vintage that had very long, slow malos that I can recall were the 1993s (which I tasted in barrel in March of 1995, rather than November of 19994), and vignerons have subsequently equated slow malos with promise for the overall quality of the finished wines.
Normally I would postpone this trip and hope that spring would find more wines that had finished up their malos, but this year I am locked into several November events in Burgundy unrelated to the 2008s, and so will have to soldier on and see how the wines show. I probably will score the wines in a range- which I generally hate to do- as it tends to make the numerical scores even more meaningless than usual. And of course now plan in a follow-up trip to retaste the wines sometime later this year.