So since we are talking vintages… anyone have a grasp indirect or direct on ‘23 (no recent posts)? Total thread drift but curious how it racks and stacks with ‘19/‘20/‘22 as I am unable to get there this year and I have some futures coming up. Thank you in advance.
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Regarding 19 vs 20, 19 is certainly drinking better now, but I have a feeling it will be different in 10 years. 2020 whites are above 2019 whites for me.
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Ha ha! I was going to reply to this thread. Never did i expect to see my full report linked.
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There was a short thread on '23 following a Vinfolio write-up:
Some limited, but useful insights there
Jasper Morris just posted his report from the 2020 Red Burgfest.
«Choose your wines carefully, and you will be amply rewarded by this fascinating vintage, with wines capable of ageing for the long term.»
I’ve never really liked 2020 from the first bottle I had an onward. I’ve been actively avoiding buying them recently, with rare exceptions. I think an earlier post in this thread really hit the nail on the head. If you prize red fruit in your burgundy then stay far far away from 2020 as everything I’ve had has been dark. Blue and black fruited. 2021 totally swung the other direction with some of the leanest, greenest and light wines I’ve had in recent years, almost a bit too much in that direction for me to be honest. This reaffirms to me that 2019s are super special. A magic combination of generosity of red fruit, elegance, very little greenness, good acid, lovely aromatics. I also must say that I strong prefer 2018 to 2020. While neither vintage is solidly in my wheelhouse, 2018 feels more well rounded to me with some redeeming character to the deep density. 2020 is a hard pass.
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For folks with way more depth plus breadth of Burgundy experience than me, what older vintages are you comparing 2020s with? Or do the generally warmer weather and corresponding adjustments in winemaking make comparisons impossible?
Jasper also points out the quite high incidence of Brett that he encountered especially with the CdN wines (this was based upon his in bottle, blind BurgFest tasting).
Many of them I unfortunately own…
Leroux Caillerets
Faiveley Cazetiers
Clos de la Chapelle
Arlot Suchots
Yes. 2018 tastes like ripe Burgundy. 2020 tastes like Syrah - just a totally different register.
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The last two Burgfests have left me wondering whether brett in solar vintages has the potential to become red Burgundy’s pox…
That’s probably an exaggeration but maybe not a wild one.
2020 tastes darker and denser, but I wouldn’t say it tastes like Syrah. There are plenty of 2015s and 2016s that are equally dark fruited (at a lunch in Beaune this year several people called a 2015 Barthod 1er cru a Syrah); I think 2005 is a good comparison to 2005 - a warm and very structured vintage. Not every vintage is designed to or meant to be drunk young. For people who want to drink their wines very early, yes, I agree, 2020 isn’t a good vintage, but a lot of vintages are not.
Rounding back to this: Chave Hermitage and brett - opinions? - #5 by Greg_K
I think for a lot of producers who use whole cluster brett wasn’t an issue previously because temperatures weren’t high enough for it to matter; now that temperatures are higher, that’s no longer the case. I expect it will take some time for this to be more apparent and we’ll probably be talking about this period as somewhat marred by brett for some producers for whom it wasn’t a problem before.
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Thank you- hoping there have been new info/tastings to add as futures are coming out fast and furious.
Thanks Ryan. I have heard the opposite as well so someone will need to fly out there and try more wines lol. Will look out for more info
Oh crap- me too
I found this from the World of Fine Wine, January 2022. Frankly I can’t think of a description less fitting for 2020 reds.
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Microbiology as a whole, with brett as the leading villain, is going to be (in fact, is already) the major winemaking battlefield of the next decade and beyond in Burgundy.
Unfortunately, many winemakers take what I call the Covid approach: if you don’t test for it, you haven’t got it.
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It depends how you define “fresher”. Acidities are analytically higher, and pHs lower, in most case-to-case comparisons between 2019 and 2020. In some cases, as chez Jadot for example which is a big sample set, abvs were around 0.5% lower than in 2019, though still above-average.
The stylistic issue with 2020 is all the sunshine and lack of water. That makes it a more uneven vintage than 2019, as more extreme conditions foreground differences in farming and site more prominently. The very ripe fruit, sometimes with sunburn, was clearly not that well suited to oxidative élevage processes (e.g. racking with lots of air uptake, sometimes multiple times), which can put tradition at odds with results. Too much oxygen can dull the fruit after a little time in bottle, and then the oak comes to the fore, and very ripe fruit is more susceptible to this (just look at how many 1990s evolved). The fact that less ripe fruit handles such treatment better is surely one reason why what are on paper “weaker” vintages not infrequently outperform the banner years in Burgundy after a decade in bottle.
I have always underlined that 2020 reds are more inconsistent than 2019 in TWA, and that inconsistency seems more prominent after a few years in bottle. But 2019 is also a pretty high bar to measure any red Burgundy vintage against.
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While a sad phenomenon, you still managed to squeeze a chuckle out of me.
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Interesting discussion. I haven’t tried many 2020s, and really didn’t buy much looking at my inventory, but I have been amazed at the ripeness and dripping blueberry fruits of even basic Bourgognes , which is fine at that level when consuming young.
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