Speaking for the old guard camp - Brovo !!
good point - I actually have the Echezeaux from Naudin, also in 2020 as the Aloxe. But will probably wait a bit before trying a bottle - I generally wait with 2020s currently, opening the Aloxe was not planned, more like a impulsive choice in the cellar 
It all comes down to what you like and what you want to spend on a bottle of wine. I personally like Pinot from Burgundy, Oregon and California. I can see the difference but one isn’t better than the other except you tend to pay more for good burgundy vs duds in the same price range as the better Oregon wines. I recall one get together with a tasting group I like. They love Burgundy as well as German. I brought a high end Occidental SWK from 2015. They poo poo’ed and dumped! I loved it and couldn’t believe they were dumping it! It’s all a matter of what you like and only you.
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Thanks for your reply. In the early 2010s as it was a fashion - during that time - for natural wines. I was curisou so I bought multiple bottles of Naudin Ferrand wines including her N.St.George 1er cru - Les Damodes and also cases of her C-de-N- Viola Odarata; H. C-de-B Orchis mascula and her white : Le Clou - a very old Aligote ).
I kept tracks of them for a few years and finally gave up. They are beatiful to enjoy young specially in the entry and/or lower red and whites. They also aged well but did not gain complexity with bottle-age as expected from me personally, other than her Les Damodes.
I still have one bottle of the 2012 (which is her 2nd highest priced wine in her portfolio ) left and also a few bottles of her low-end red from 2013 to 2014. I did not buy her Echzeaux as I was not sure of it and did not wish to gamble.
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there is also a lot of hype about the labor intensive and costly farming practices certain new producers employ, however how much affect can this have on the wine if the methods have only been used for a few vintages (especially if farming was rather conventional beforehand)? somehow there are plenty of producers with longstanding commitment to organic, biodynamic, etc but don’t use it as a marketing strategy and still fly under the radar.
Same here. I have only tasted Bizot wines at restaurants. Never have owned one and I have quite a few Burgandies.
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Good buy for 2010 for Naudin’s from her high-end portfalio.
I am sure her 2020 red will gain complexity with bottle-age and vintage 2020 a very natural low-yield red ( = more concentration ).
I wish I did the same like you - for Naudin’s wines. .
Guess you are aware of Naudin’s relatonship with Bizot too !.
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At that event we opened 4 2017 Rousseau wines, 3 of which were the wines of the entire tasting. I’ve had the 2017 DRC RSV before and I think it’s not a bad wine (although I do think it will probably be smashed by the luminescent 2017 JJ Confuron RSV in side by side comparisons). I don’t think the age of the wine was that much of a factor. As far as whole cluster goes, Bizot and Arnoux wines show just fine early, as do Guyon. 22 DRC is also drinking phenomenally. I just don’t think it was a good showing for the DRC and a great one for the WK and Guilbert wines. In any case my point is for early drinking these wines are extremely hard to beat.
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I totally get the distinction between old guard and more up and coming producers. However, there is clearly a spectrum to what the market thinks these bottles should cost, and it is certainly influenced by hype on social media. I think that William’s wines would be tremendously expensive even without Instagram though. I also think his wines are uniquely crafted with aging in mind and categorically different and better than the others. They are serious, structured, and anything but glou glou.
I would put Arnaud Lopez, Nicholas Faure, Pierre Oliver Garcia, Louis Billard, Les Horées, Kei Shiogai and probably quite a few others in a group of new school producers that focus on viticulture, and tend to follow a handful of similar stylistic winemaking tendencies. Interestingly, many of them sourced from the same vineyards, making horizontal between producers more than possible. It’s also not like those vineyards are all out in Marsannay, either (here I’m thinking about NSG Les Herbues, Savigny Les Beane Les Peuillets, and a few others) but there are often not estate wines.
I should clarify further that there are several estates that fall into a kind of in-between category, as producers whose wines you could buy 10 or more years ago, but where a new generation/style has taken the estate in a different, more approachable direction similar to what’s described above. Jean Pierre Guyon, Charles Lachaux, Nicole Lamarche, Millot, etc would be good examples and this has been discussed a lot elsewhere.
Interesting topic, and while I feel there’s a significant luxury fomo effect at the top level, many of these wines are fairly priced for being delicious, handcrafted products that don’t need a decade. I’m a sucker enough to pay for a few of them each year just to taste what’s going on.
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Yep, I get it. My own likes almost invariably have been inexorably tied to a wine “journey” I’ve taken and enjoyed - a wine opened from a particular region or area, which “set the hook” as I experienced it, that in turn then led to exploring more wines from that producer or area, and quite often other producers, and so on. But the costs associated with such a journey always remain relevant for me and, I suspect, most of us. In retrospect, I probably should have just kept my thoughts to myself. 
Again, I do enjoy reading the Burgundy threads as many of the tasting notes interest me (even though, as most point out, they are “different” Pinot Noir wines than those made in Oregon or California and which provide me so much pleasure). 
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Excellent read - I love it and very well said.
That being said, some of the names are familiar to me but I would not buy it - for example : Arnaux Lachaux, Nicole Lamarche,
Guffens absolutely gives grand cru whites a run for their money and then some. The others are similar (Meix Cadot VV?) but fall outside the thread topic IMO because they have all been making wine for 20-40 years and could be bought in the past but have just in the past few been realized by the market for how good they really are.
Edit: and that is in enormous part thanks to the writing of WK, who has been a vocal champion of DJ, Lorenzon, Guffens, Vincent, Bouley, etc etc because he recognizes smart viticulture, sound practices, hard work and likes the final product.
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I had the 2020 Laschaux Echezeaux last year. Nice wine. Full stop.
2017 seems like the kind of vintage that is right up the Rousseau alley.
And to the point of previous reputation having an outsized impact on the current wines of top producers. DRC is not unaffected by this.
This goes to the heart of one of the biggest issues in wine today. Someone produces an exceptional vintage, they hit the social media and it blows up. Pricing skyrockets…and is defended by saying that this producers wine is better, at a tasting, than XXX blue chip producer whose wines set the price bar.
At what point to we say, “Laschaux tastes better than XXX, Rousseau was better at a tasting than XXX, now WK Bourgogne VV is better than XXX, Bizot is better than XXX this week…so pricing on XXX producers blue chip wines ought to come back to earth because there are apparently a whole cohort of producers whose current wines out perform them.”?
It makes no sense to me as a consumer that every great bottle some new producer puts out should go as high as the very top of the market, especially so if the top of the market producer is suddenly not making wines that actually set the bar that everyone else strives for.
It also makes no sense that anyone without 15 to 20 years of production should ever set the market price.
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I mean, lachaux (and liger belair) are a little different because they are trying to sell a lot of wines DTC, so to some degree they have some control over the pricing. The WK wines aren’t sold for anywhere near the secondary market prices to those who are lucky enough to be allocated them, and they aren’t all that expensive at european restaurants. The issue with a lot of these wines is simply that they’re super low production and demand far outstrips supply. There’s a sea of DRC and Rousseau produced every year in comparison, like 850 cases of Rousseau Chambertin and 450 cases of Romanee Conti. There are 1-200 cases of WK wine per year, total.
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Well said.
I fear that for me, many of the new school wines that I have tried are delicious but remind me a colleagues wines here in Oregon that can be had for considerably less investment. I really enjoy Savigny but the demarcation between the Beaune side of Burgundy and Oregon wines is narrower and less distinct to me than it used to be. Even though there are many reasonably priced options, on the Beaune side, I still feel that the Cote de Nuits is more likely to give me a singular experience.
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I don’t really play in this space–”old” guard or new–and while I don’t begrudge those who do, I have to say that it would have been a service to the wine world more generally and in keeping with WK’s other job if he had spent as much effort in making a splendid wine that a much broader slice of that world could afford. Instead of or in addition to the lux bottles he is making. The world “needs” a screaming $50 or $75 value a lot more than it needs a really nice $500 or $750 or $1k bottle, even if it is “better” than a Rousseau.
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That is it in a nutshell for the wines I am familiar with, which does not include the WK wines.
I don’t care if you drink it or not. I don’t need to encourage other people to drink the wines, there’s enough demand as it is. My point was that there’s a reason why the wines are priced the way they are, because they’re very good, and also because they’re very expensive to make in the way they’re made, and traditional producers aren’t making their Bourgogne in the same way.”
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I think it is fairly obvious that you have been pushing these wines; this thread is a perfect example. I started reading it, and realized you were on another crusade.The Jouan versus the Kelley conversation is another; and if I bother to look through all your Burgundy notes, I am sure I will find more. You seem to be relentlessly pushing these wines, whether it is here, or on other internet outlets where you write about the wines.
By all means love the wines; I would prefer to buy 2 bottles of Vogue Musigny 2022 rather than one bottle of 2022 Kelley’s Bourgogne. Better still, six bottles of the Musigny for a single bottle of Etelois. Tell me if you think this makes any sense?
The reason these wines are expensive is not the way they are made. I would very much doubt that even with the careful viticulture and low yields, they cost twice as much to make as a top quality grand cru. We are basically looking at a very scarce wine being chased by a few people. 300 to 600 bottles is tiny, and with the kind of buzz on the internet, it has resulted in the kinds of pricing we are seeing at auction and retail.
The question which I think has come through on this thread, is whether the good showings young, will translate into complex beautiful wines when aged.
I am glad I got the chance to taste the one wine I did. Perhaps there is some alchemy which makes the wines transcend what is possible. I did not see it, and the fact that the Hudelot Cailles from the same vintage was so much better was pretty telling.
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I made the post primarily because I feel like there are a certain set of experienced burgundy drinkers on here that are not keeping up with changes in burgundy be it new domains, new producers, and are following a lot of behaviors and practices that haven’t changed since the 90s etc, and obviously there’s a lot of changes both in winemaking and in the climate.
Also you’re being very disingenuous regarding the price of the Kelley wines; they don’t cost nearly that much; there are some crazy secondary market prices which do not reflect reality.
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I looked at Wine Searcher and those amazing K&L auction prices. That’s the market; if there are insider prices or access to the release ones for the ordinary punter, please let me know.