Jasper reviews the vintage now being offered. “All other things being equal, I would recommend going large in 2022, large in the sense of a broad range because there are so many really good wines at all levels.”
– What were the Challenges?
– How well did the producers respond?
– Just how good are the wines ?
– Where are the sweet spots
– And what about prices…?
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Good evening all I hope everybody is well this sort of takes me back to the uh the days of the covid lock-ins lockdowns uh when this was our best way of communicating we had some wonderful uh sessions together talking about wine tasting wine so today’s topic is going
To be looking at the 2022 vintage here in burgundy which I have been tasting strenuously for uh the two months October November into the beginning of December and ever since then I’ve been uh locked away in myself and uh literally um writing up the tasting
Notes so if you follow um if you’re a follower if you’re a subscriber to Jasper Morris inside burgundy you’ll have seen all the notes right on shaby on the co chenez on the C toone and we’ve had the first on from the CI there will be another report uh tomorrow if
All goes well shaan M vjo and Mario sand and that will just leave me CH sh masisa to finish over the weekend uh can I urge you to use the chat function to say hello say where you come from say what you’ve got to drink uh assuming you have a glass
Alongside uh I have for the moment a little glass of maon from Mark heisa maon 22 both the wines I’ve brought up with me for tonight both 22s you will see when I did that that I’ve got a wounded hand that’s nearly better got operated on two days before Christmas so
I got out of the washing up uh and it’s nearly better great well um I’ll try not to go through things too much sort of systematically chronologically though obviously we need to do a little bit of that to understand what’s happening um aha the messages are coming in the first
Three are Stockholm Boulder Colorado then we have Denmark Norway Barcelona yes Brazil terrific this is really exciting good news that you’re here is that you can of course ask questions at any time I may not answer them immediately but I’ll try to cover them before we are finished uh in an hour or
So’s time um in it it’s also true to say that this will a recording of this event will be available afterwards if you want to go back and uh check it out and uh hold me to askask for whatever whatever it is that I’ve been
Saying great so so if we just start the cycle and I promise you I won’t spend too much time on this chronological point of view uh but we start with the previous winter and it wasn’t really cold enough uh except in January and it wasn’t really wet enough um because what
You want is to have cold weather during the winter to kill off the bugs and you want to replenish the water tables because for quite a few years now our water tables have been definitely less than where we want them I just illuminated my background a little bit better um but but nothing
Disastrous you may remember that the big problem in 2021 wasn’t just the cold in April but it was the fact that we had Midsummer weather for a week at the end of March which meant all the vines started kicking off and uh the buds came out and then they got completely
Clobbered uh by the frost in the beginning of April and it’s been several years in a row now when we have typically had uh a properly cold spell in early April with temperatures descending minus 345 occasionally worse uh centigrade and it did in fact happen again in uh
2022 much less than in the past in the cat door um some people lit up their candles or other protective Machinery um but not everybody did and there wasn’t much damage apart from to Shard at the bottom of shasan mese which is yet another reason why you shouldn’t be
Planting chard there you should have stuck to your original P Noir because uh it it um buds later and wouldn’t have suffered from the frost the other area that did get hit definitely was Shu so I remember when I was in sh in May of that
Year of 23 rather um tasting the 2022 is um no I’m sorry I apologize when I was in sh in May of 2022 tasting the 2021s F DOA was uh in despair because as well as having lost most of his crop in 21 uh he said he’d lost 50% Frost in 22 in
The end he made an absolute full crop because what happened in 22 which didn’t happen in 2016 or 2021 is that there was good weather afterwards and um the secondary buds were allowed to do their thing so that was all good news um so um I’m just appeared full full screen as
Opposed to just looking a little bit bit of myself so that’s a bit daunting um immediately after that the weather was actually pretty good for the rest of April and that again is a contrast from 2016 and 2021 when it was cold and damp that meant that the fines never got a
Chance to recover oidium and mildy both set in and it was a really real really hard struggle thereafter for the rest of the growing season not so in 22 the rest of April was was warm cheerful um and then um uh that continued that turned
Out to be pretty much the model for the summer um I I’ve looked up some statistics and the codor is less extreme than either the sh or son LA but basically from January through to the end of September January was colder than usual September was fractionally colder
Than usual but February was much warmer March a bit warmer April about level June uh sorry may definitely warmer a lot warmer nearly um 20% warmer than the norm um June was warmer uh July was warmer August was again a lot warmer so we’ve only really had the month of
January which was colder um and then in terms of rainfall uh January much less rainfall than usual uh even up to 50% Less in some parts February the same March even more so April the same uh May well over 50% less rain than normal so you basically had your first five months of
The year with almost no rain uh June was different June the figures look enormous and the coat door there was more than double normal rainfall but basically it all fell on one day ore every sh it all fell in two hours which is not ideal and then July
There was almost no rainfall at all August was was very dry except there were a few useful showers later on and then September it got wetter again but that doesn’t really matter because everybody finished um their um um Harvest by September um I’m just going to ask Scott
My colleague if he can put up on the screen uh a little thing which we have got from um yeah there we go all party balloons Christmas time um so the point of this little uh diagram is that um you have three different things uh going you’ve got temperatures rainfall
And also a bit of sunshine so on if you are top left you are particularly hot and dry obviously bottom right you’re cold and wet uh and then you’re cold and dry um top right and and uh cooler and wetter in the in the bottom um sorry I’ve got those the wrong way
Around let me repeat that from the start um so top left hot and dry bottom left uh cooler and dry um top right hot and wet bottom right cool and wet and then the size of the particular um ball is uh how sunny it was so you can see that
20122 and 2003 uh 2015 has been a bit eclipsed by those is close to it um 2020 as well and rather surprisingly 2011 is up there um it was just it wasn’t a particularly friendly summer um but it it was on the whole uh hot I’m
Surprised that it’s um hot and dry for some of the months um not throughout the whole season but you can see that 2022 should have been the most exceptional uh in a not good way if you like of global warming Vint mes okay thanks for that Scott we can we’ll leave
It up for a second or two and then we can drop it I should just have a sip of my Mael so um I mentioned the rainfall in June and then one other thing I’m going to call on Scott for in a minute is a little map of the big storm broadly speaking everybody got hit by it weather patterns up in shadley were quite similar
Um and I think the Macon too and chaon um but it especially affected the koten and the storm is there are two parts to it there’s the rainfall which is either good or bad depending on quite how much you get um and um uh Jean FR
Know the chart is not up on the website uh but I will put it up in due course assuming that’s all right with the bivb who where it originates um so um um but again yes uh so there’s the rain and then the other aspect is the hail
And Scott we can have the the map of shy shampan here it comes obviously taken from the inside Burgundy book so the hell storm starts up in the com Deo which here we’re going to magically little line is going to draw itself and then it swings through lavoo
And Clan jaac and castier and champo and then it carries on across the border into faisa and Brisa and maybe just getting into Mar um but that’s the line of the main hail bits dribbled off and so you might have got if it had turned
Left rather than right a few a few salls would have gone down there and of course the rainfall just came pouring down the line of leas resistance so it came through the town of shiffy uh rather than um uh necessarily following that line that’s got so strong
For us so there’s an unfortunate um couple who have a really really nice um sort of shambra um called I think is it the D of course shador who are at the top of sh shatan but at the foot of the condo and their building was completely swamped
And many other people had their sellers swamped uh and it was a real real problem they had something like worst 140 millimeters of rain um in which is a normal whole June figure uh they had that in an hour and a half um so by the time you got to Mar the rain
Is slacking off a bit uh Moray sand gets nearly as not as much rain but it gets noticeably less as you get down to vom uh noticeably less it’s still pinted rain and that’s valuable at this point because if the rainfall hasn’t done you actual damage then it is is really set
You up for the rest of the season Lis s George unfortunately gets another little strand of the uh hail storm in the southern part so not The Vineyards between n and vone but the ones which are closest to the southern edge of um the town of Nui um stretching maybe as
Far as Le San George but not really much further little bit in the coach vage Vineyards um but it’s important to stress that the this hail whether it’s Chev or Nui uh all of it was in the month of June which means that your grapes have they finished forming of
Course and they’re growing but they haven’t started to change color the skin sudden got soft and um because it was nice and warm and dry afterwards the damaged berries fell off so it’s not really damaged uh the quality at all but it has reduced your
Crop um so that’s um um sort of the the the General plan um uh for how the Vintage went U or or rather the summer went but if we continue on through July I mentioned extremely hot and dry August started the same way but then there were
A few little showers which were probably uh beneficial um as it got later on maybe less so cian Alo came in Maris s came up an interesting thing when I tasted with him he said it was really beneficial 24 hours after that little bit of rain
Because it perked out the grapes and any of them which were thinking about getting a bit wrinkly stopped um and uh uh then beyond that it sort of re accelerated the ripening cycle and it meant that the leaves started falling off more quickly so he in fact um chose
To pick a lot of his crop once he worked this was happening he picked half the vineyard before the rain he wait for a little bit of rain and and then he picked the rest 24 hours later to try and get the best of all worlds it’s
Amazing that the level of detail that some people will go into right so um we’ve we’ve got a few nice um um uh comments uh and also just a few questions I’m looking at um the date of the big storm one question was the 22nd of June uh and somebody else
Has also said the evening’s about 22 but what’s a quick take on 23 I’ll try and finish with a couple of words on uh on 23 because uh when you’re planning all your enormous purchases in uh um of 2022 it might be helpful to um have an
Idea of what’s coming up in 23 I can see that of course uh right we can dispense for the with the map thank you Scott back on the main thing that way I can get to see the chat so many of you put out so many
Things that in fact I’m probably uh not going to follow everything on the chat but if you’ve got a question that definitely wants answering put it on the Q&A um um Toby’s just asked are there any measures been considered in burgundy similar to those being looked at in
Piermont in relation to hail damage I don’t know enough about what’s happening in in pi mon uh but what has been allowed after a few years of Trials is you can now put up a version of hail netting which are it it’s it’s a sort netting which you can roll up and roll
Down as you need it uh the top of which is at the level of your wires uh um along the rows of the W Vines and you roll it down or you um if if you need to but you can R it up if they want to do some
Treatment um it probably does make a bit of a difference it’s a bit of a faf um the reason they wanted to do the trials was to make sure that it wasn’t really changing the microclimate um in such a way that you might either be favoring um unreasonably or unfavor
Uh where you were uh we also they have put up little sort of Cannon stations to shoot Rockets up to try and Seed storms so they fall Elsewhere on the unfortunate agriculture in the neighboring communes uh and probably successful because if you think about how many hail storms we had in the
Decade of the first decade of the 2000s they were a lot more and a lot more serious than we’ve had in the last 10 years so maybe they are being affective um talking to Pier de benoa of D ven he said have you noticed in fact one happened while I was tasting with
Him sometimes you get this bur for about 15 minutes of torrential rain and we used not to get that but basically he thinks that is what would have been a hail storm but the seeding of the clouds has turned it into rain U but violent rain rather than rather than
Hail good so we’re now getting to the uh the key moment um with What’s um with with the grapes being ready to come in so we’ve got you saw that all those little balloons on the screen so we have got uh what could have been a really
Ugly season too hot and too dry and we had that to some extent in 2018 and 2020 um we had the heat in 2019 which led to uh abnormally high alcohol levels but in 2018 18 and 2020 it led in certain communes and depending on your
Picking date to some wines uh which were drying out um The Vines got blocked and so they couldn’t ripen physiologically and the tanins weren’t right but the grapes got wrinkled and basically you had cooked flavors that could so easily have happened in 2022 and it didn’t most
People cite uh the June rainfall as giving the vines enough energy to see themselves through Allied to that little the few showers in August which just freshened up at the last minute um there are improvements in how people handle their Vineyard work but that’s not true of everybody I mean The
Cutting Edge the really smart guys are trying things but it is still all experimental uh things like changing the canopy things like no longer plowing um many more people are either leaving grass or planting um grass or other covers u in The Vines and some of them are claiming maybe 2%
Maybe even up to five degrees um cooler soil that they have tested when they uh do that when they when they um have got a cover crop in rather than having plowed so that’s becoming the new normal at the really sort of smart end if you
Like um and uh seems to be an improvement you’ve got to be careful with your canopy some people are still de leafing which I think is totally the wrong thing to do but they say it enables them to make sure that their sprays are reaching
The grapes um but if you let the sun see the grapes then you’re really setting yourself up for problems um then there’s the other idea which I’m hesitant about um which is are the vines themselves learning can they learn in as short as space of time
Was really five years 2018 2023 um about these really hot and dry years it’s possible they can but I’m not a specialist here and you know I I can understand that it might just be wishful thinking on our part hoping that the vines are learning a
Lesson but they may be um and it may be that they are saying okay these are a new normal we need to survive so let’s find our best way of doing so so um I’m hoping anyway the reality was that the grapes were in much better condition
When they were picked there were lots of them thoroughly healthy yield um numbers will vary in shab most people produced the maximum or the maximum plus 10% which you’re allowed to do in a system up there called VCI they say e uh which says 10% more than the permitted maximum
You’re allowed to keep that wine park it on one side and if over the next three years you have a shortfall you’re allowed to bring it back into action again it’s actually rather complicated to manage unless it’s next year so it happened in 2018 and got hoovered up in
2019 it won’t be needed in 2023 because it’s an even bigger crop than 22 um so we got a big crop in white and we got a pretty big crop in red as well now if you remember back to 2017 we didn’t give 2017s um the credit which they maybe deserve because we
Still had in our heads a crop of that size you’re not going to make great P make good wines but you’re not going to make gra wines um the reason why we’ve never wanted to have big yields for p Noir is is twofold one is because we felt the grapes
Wouldn’t ripen and the other is because we felt that um they would be diluted um the fruit would be diluted because of course p has a less thick skin than almost any other major gra grape uh so there’s less of the flavor um matter to to go with the juice
Inside what we’ve learned in the Years starting with 2017 and continuing is that there’s no worry anymore about rankening the grapes it’s going to happen Okay 2021 was really tricky but even so the grapes got pretty much right um not as much as the years on either
Side um but 2017 clearly they were rip 2022 2023 clearly they’re ripe so what about dilution um in the end we’re just finding that the 2017s are really Supple and they’re not going to make great wines if by great mind wines you mean wine that can
Last for 25 50 years uh but that made they have made really good wines which were a joy to drink and 2022 is going to be more concentrated than 2017 in one aspect it reminds me of 20 sorry of 1999 which is a lovely vintage but there
Was a big crop especially big in the Coten and the weather conditions a little bit more rain towards the end in the kenui so that probably holds Good in 20 22 as well uh but in 1999 the wines of very few are actively diluted some of them sto short of the extra
Concentration that makes them great but others are great and frankly I found that 1999 hardly moved and still in my own seller I am mostly keeping them for later rather than having drunk them or or wishing to drink them now um so so that looks after uh yields um the white
Wines in fact both colors it’s incredibly even it’s even from north to south accepting uh issues about the storms it’s issues it’s even from Little appalachi up to big appalachi uh to some extent good Growers to and less good Growers pretty much everybody has made good to very good and sometimes exceptional
Wine one of the features and it’s the same reason that everybody made great white wines in 2014 is because the window of the picking date is reasonably wide open in 2020 um 2020 2022 I beg you Pard much more than it was in 2020 2020 you absolutely
Had to go and get in there in 2022 the dates start about let’s say about 25th of August for the early people starting date in the coat to Bone uh through to the later people might have started 1 or second of September in the CI it might
Have been early people end of August later people 7th of September and in shaby the early people with the same as the cat to bone on the 25th and the late people were the same as Coen on the 7th of September so which is weird because
Um until quite recently and it has been true of years like 20 and 22 um picking dates in shab are almost the same as the cat door um which was never the case before they used to be at least two weeks behind and uh does actually have uh one adverse
Effect is that it’s harder to get Pickers because no longer can itinerant Pickers start in the South Region and work their way up as each part of the region uh finishes and the next one starts so um do we have alcohol levels like we
Did in 2018 19 and 20 the answer is we don’t people started um at about 12% the highest I’ve seen of people having one or two wines at 14 and a half um but quite a few people were 12 12 and a half and actually even chapiz a little bit um
Never very much but they’re more more likely to have used chaptalization in order with this addition of sugar to prolong the fermentations a bit more fortunately nowadays the vast majority of people have got proper cooling regimes um because in past vages by which I mean 20 plus years past
Um if it was hot during the Harvest The Grapes were warm they stay warm and the fermentation suff very very quickly and you didn’t get the um density or complexity of flavor that you would want actually 1997 would have been a much better Harvest if people had been able
To cool the grapes for example um but now some people only pick in the morning many people have um if not the ability to cool their tanks down they will quite often now have cold rooms or cold lores that they’ve hired in which they can put uh the bins of
Grapes overnight or for a couple of hours at any rate and bring the temperature down it’s much better to process grapes at sort of 10 12 13° centigrade than it is at 20 something um when they sort of fall off the bunches if you want to keep them on the on the
Stems um so temperature at Harvest a bit of an issue but it was going to be worse when we talk next year about 2023 it was been a lot worse um so only very occasionally when I tasted the wines have I thought oh that’s a bit hot um bit of a
Problem acidity more of an issue it is a slightly low acid year but in common with other recent FES the taste of the acidity is a little bit more than the analysis would suggest it ought to be now I started out by thinking when I began at the beginning of October Monday
Morning 2nd of October 8:00 a.m. my my standard first uh visit is always to Jack Caron in pun Mar he he always says yes for that for that first one and so it sort of gives me a kickoff point and as it happens the first at least
Half dozen um visits I made everybody was serving their white wines very cold and in fact that should have been a a bit of a warning Point um uh for me that uh uh they might have had something to hide later on with a few people who
Either didn’t care or have been a bit more careless um uh and served the wines at a much warmer temperature you could see that the wines are nothing like as crisp and chiseled as I first first thought but nor are they flabby and nor are they hot um so I think in quality
The white wies are coming in the range of 2014 not as good as 2014 which remains my favorite but 17 20 and 22 are all going to have um sort of rivaling each other for a place on the podium behind the gold medalist of 2014 um and weirdly in white 2020 and 22
Tastes really quite similar um there’s a sense of precision maybe in 22 more than was the case in 20 the 21’s perhaps a little bit um more concentrated uh but it’s hard to choose I mean I asked the question with loads of people and some went one way some
Went the other way um but it it’s it’s it’s a properly good vintage which will be delicious to drink early but seems to me to have a Natural Balance which means it will keep pretty well also um I’ll just mention someone wanted to know earlier about how 23 is going to
Shape up there’s a sort of a a sense of delight in the 23s they are they have probably even more character than 22 uh but they’re also low in acid possibly lower in acid uh but they’re going to be completely gorgeous when they’re young and then you
Have to monitor them and see if they do have staying power or not so 23 is going to be a contender as well um but 2022 I like them enormously in white uh and uh a little bit later I’ll talk about the sweet spots and mention particular
Features that come out of it so nothing special to say about white wine fication um if we talk about the red wines a few people particularly those who pick later did get some SL slight cases of stuck fermentations but that’s much more of a problem in 23 um and
Uh the other issue which is frequently the case nowadays is that people are tending to get very early malolactic fermentations sometimes at the same time as or even before the alcoholic fermentation that’s a problem in one sense that you’ve got to be really really careful in order to uh make sure
That um you don’t have any uh bacterial spoilage or other issues um but and also in another sense the the old the wise old boys used to say that you should count your eleva as your maturation period from the the um end of malolactic fermentation and then you should raise
The wines for 12 months in Barrel after that time uh so that would Point towards a slightly earlier bottling dat these days than used to be the case um there are no longer all that many people who keep the wine a second winter in Wood uh a lots
Take the wine out of the barrel uh when they want to put the new vintage in a few put them rack them into another barrel uh most people will either bottle them over the next month or so maybe before Christmas or else they’ll keep them for a second winter but in tank
Rather than in Barrel no rules ever cover everybody uh in in in burgundy um the other thing which is happening oh sorry in um terms of red wine vinification you might expect um with pretty ripe grapes uh that there would be lots of whole bunch notification yes that trend is still in
Place it’s no longer advancing as rapidly as it was because most people who want to do it are doing it there are two reasons not to in 2022 quite as much as you were doing before one of those is um because you didn’t have enough space in your tanks because your tanks were
Full because you had a nice big crop that’s going to be even more of an issue come 2023 uh and the other is because you were worried about the fact that your pH readings uh one of the measures of acidity are higher meaning lower acidity
Um and therefore you are more at risk of bacterial spoilage and uh volatile and I have found a few instances of both those things but they’re not rampant and they’re definitely much less than would have been the case in 2018 18 or 2020 um interesting comment comment from
Shery say in Mar sand he said because you look back at um the records of his father’s time because Jeremy um sort of took over in 2021 it’s been a a fluid transition um but he was around during the 90s and he’s looked at his father’s
Notebooks um in the 1990s they had a much lower pH at the grapes at Harvest I.E high acid uh but by the time the um grapes had been fermented and then had been pressed the pH readings were much higher than they are today because there’s a lot more
Potassium in the soil which had got into the grapes and was then released by The pressing so what’s happening now is you start the lower reading but it doesn’t change much and also because there’s so little malic acid in these hot years it’s much more tartaric when you have
The malolactic fermentation you’re not changing the acid profile very much whereas you would have been in um 20 30 years ago so we’re having to learn what’s the right balance uh all over again the only other thing to add is that in the elevage um many people are moving to
Bigger barrels especially in white but also in red and then there was the question of how much new wood to use and here 2021 has a role to play because many people didn’t buy any new barrels in 21 or if they did it was only a small amount for the very small crop
And so people had almost no one-year-old barrels to use in 2022 so some people also in order to to sort of renew their Barrel Park having not bought the previous year used a slightly bigger proportion of new o in 22 but there’s enough concentration in the wines that they can carry it
Easily okay so I think we pretty much got through to the moment of Jo my Mac Off of um what the wines taste like and whether you should be buying them and all all those sorts of things um and I’ve see one or two more questions uh um someone’s asked about
Pricing 22 I’m absolutely going to get to that um Peter has asked about climate change progression and burgundy vintages well that chart that we looked at before I think rather shows that um Peter I hope you were there for that that if not I’m
Sure I will try and get that put up on the website I will just ask permission first um and Andrew’s asked about trunk diseases Esa and PSAR pruning um that’s a little bit off Target for what we’re talking about if there’s time I will come back and and talk about that um
Before we finish anyway do tell us how the wines that you’re tasting alongsid um uh are are coming along whether you’re enjoying them uh and Stephen’s asked about have you scored few five star Wines in 22 and 2019 uh I don’t know yet uh I haven’t worried
About the finish one thing I can tell you is that there will be many more fourstar wines I’m guessing that five stars will be either similar or fewer um but but it really is a fourstar vintage so many wines are really good and only a few of them are absolutely superb
Um so um now we’ll talk about what the wines taste like and um Gideon has just mentioned that a few people reporting more exotic less typical flavors than the 22 whites any feeling on that well I wasn’t picking that up at all to begin with particularly with the cold
Temperatures with warmer temperatures a certain amount even so I think that at this stage in the parallel stage um they are less um Lush uh and tropical flavors than 2019 offered um 2018 didn’t in white because it was such a big crop that the wines were that little bit diluted and so
Anything exotic I think was actually calmed down by that but 2017 and 2020 perhaps uh both have come out as that little bit richer than we would have seen them at the time and I think that is probably a fair bet that 2022 in two three years time will look
Slightly Lusher and richer than we see them today but I don’t think they’re going to fall off their purches in that respect um but uh but yes uh I was going to come to that in my written report I had something a little heading called what can possibly go wrong and that’s
Really the only issue but the critical thing about 22 which is totally positive is that the grapes were entirely healthy your only risk in white was having a little bit of odium um which is one of the two mils I always forget which is dowy and which is powdery but anyway its
Full name is its Latin name is odium Tucker um and that’s the disease which you can get when you have a big alternation between hot days and cold nights and then uh this white Bloom um forms on the leaves and sometimes on the grapes uh and it can be a problem but
It’s fairly easy to manage for for the smart people so I don’t it was there but it’s not really an issue um otherwise grapes were white grapes were entirely healthy um and red grapes were too um so with the whites I found I like the shab whites better than I like 2020
Because in 2020 I felt there was more of a a sign of grapes being grilled more of a sign of rening being blocked you had the pine paste which is sort of like a a GRE green but grilled hazelnut uh in some of the wines and I
Really hardly saw that at all in 2022 so uh shab shabi I’m I’m positive um uh the macalls I’ve seen have been very good but I haven’t spent enough time down there I regret and I I still have to report on the things that I have
Seen um but across the Cod the bone uh there’s nothing where I felt the uh temperatures or lack of rain got too much and there’s one Village which I think has come back into the room I thought punin really suffered in 1819 and 20 because the hot dry conditions
Seem to take away the floral nature of the bouquet of which is one of the great setting points of that appalation the thing that sets it apart from chassin and M and it just wasn’t there um and in 2022 frequently I found floral notes in the one
And I regard that as a definite positive uh so it’s not that I think pun is better than M sh but it’s it’s lost the little negative that was coming into the picture um and um f just kindly asked as I was waving my hands like what have I done to
My hand it’s nearly mended f it got operated on just before Christmas and or um a disease which is rare that exists if any of you are medics it’s called in French the malady D or uh and it um look there’s a there’s a nice scar forming there which I’ve got
To sort out um but anyway it’s it’s on the men no problem but thank you for asking um so um and you disturb my my train of thought uh but basically all um all all all set fair um so no I don’t think that disease is cork screw related
Except in so far as it’s made rather difficult to uh to open bottles but I I’ve started to manage it uh I can do most of the things I want to do but oddly enough one of two things I don’t want to do I haven’t been able to do but
I was typing with with a finger and a half for um a couple of weeks which is why my reports have been slow this year and Quentin um I’m fully aware that I need to get on with a with a drink and sing update and uh I will do that during
The month of January uh rather than um having got it done in December um so that’s probably what I will say on the whites for the moment um let’s look at the Reds uh as ever it’s more complex um and here I don’t really see parallels with 17 18 19 20
21 no people I’ve talked to because I asked the Growers uh the question and they often mentioned either 17 or 19 um but I don’t think it it quite corresponds with any of the recent hot dry vintages but at the same time it’s very hard to draw parallels with earlier
Vintages when global warming wasn’t having an effect but two or three have come to mind and I’ll just mention them 1985 and Kristoff rier mentioned that one because it was totally healthy grapes completely healthy and so you have that I mean it has great reputation
85 and I’m just sure that 22 Reds are not going to let us down with one Proviso which I will come on to um when I finish talking about the other VES the one I was expecting it to be quite like 1999 for reasons I mentioned
Earlier that it was a big crop um with perhaps not quite the concentration the same concentration as in the coat re is the coat bone uh which is true of 99 um and I think there is some parallel in that but the one that instinctively I found myself drawn back to and it’s
Better than this vintage but the style isn’t too different is 2002 now I absolutely L 2002’s from the outset without thinking it was a great vintage the the the thing I used to say about it was that it’s an eight out of 10 vintage but you really love all those
Eight eight points and you can have grander vintages where which score higher but you you’re not so keen on them and they are discreet wines with with good flavor profiles properly Pino um which didn’t take enormously long time to come around but uh are saying
There and now 2022 is are a bit more concentrated um for sure and an extra degree perhaps of of alcohol because probably there would have been more chapiz going on in 2002 but the way I feel about the Vintage is actually quite similar so I think it’ll be better um than than
O2 uh but but a bit in the same line so it’s a vintage that I think all other things being equal we’ll come on to that one can pile into so just before we come on to the pricing of it um there is the question about breath and lices or other
Bacterial spoilage and volatility now I saw a bit of volatility but very rarely uh was it it um in any way significant and I saw a couple of instances when I asked myself the question of um is a bit of Breet there now the problem is the Bret really shows later
On uh at this stage you might have the start of it um but you can get Bret in a bottle later on which you won’t have seen in the barrel uh so I cannot guarantee that there won’t be and I think in some instances there will be some um and um
Um we I we’ll have to wait to see but that but I don’t think it’s going to be all that uh significant an issue and I was tasing with Christoff Perino and I asked him about one wine and I said I plucked up courage because he’s quite a
Powerful character and I said oh you think there might be a bit of breath in that one and he said no quite cly and I think Kristoff you are are you with us still uh which would be nice U because I noticed you are one of the members and
You explained to me that um the difference in flavor if you have uh an dein China egg uh I better get this the right way around uh then um bear with me half a second uh then that is a sign you’ve got bread if you have a flavor of
Gash then that could be volatile anyway uh it was your griot CH and I uh we went on tasting it together and whatever it was that I had just made me ask the question um disappeared uh uh very rapidly and Kristoff is somebody who works incredibly carefully to make sure that
He doesn’t have any deviations in his wies um in particular he’s enormously fastidious about selecting out any grapes which are even slightly wrinkled uh so um I’m just amazed at my tarity in popping the question in the first place um Michael I’m tempted to go back and
Answer your question about 22 sh to 2021s do I prefer 2221 if so why I prefer them enormously I do not think 21 is a good vintage in shle because I think it the wines are incredibly fragile and that will become apparent very soon they have quite a few flavors
To do with uh rot and some to do with M or oium so um they are fresher if you like but uh it’s not a vintage which I really enjoy um and 22s I think will be but what you won’t get is you won’t get what people
Loved about chab 203 years ago uh you know when they’re really incisive uh and you still get some of the Marine minerality but it’s just in a in a riper um idiom now and the only way to get around that it’s not going to change in
Cheling and it’s not a decision by The Producers it’s what the weather conditions offer but you still get a proper chigan flavor for me and uh it’s time that we reset our brains to understand what shaby can um offer now and to to enjoy that for itself that’s
My take on that uh right so i’ I’ve I’ve talked about um the vintages I think it’s a little bit similar to uh I come back to the health of the grapes and um then it’s more a question of the sweet spots um in the coat to Bone it was more
Often the case that I felt as I was tting the wines there’s more in reserve that I’m not seeing yet these are going to develop more and become perhaps even finer them or add more concentration compared to what I’m seeing now because they all taste relatively accessible was not a
Hard vintage to taste it was thoroughly enjoyable um but um it’s in vul is back in the room after suffering I felt in 2018 and 2020 pomar has retained the benefits of uh of the global warming and so also was on great form coron was looking much better than
It did in 2020 there’s nowh that that wasn’t looking good within the coat of bone so so that’s really very encouraging um in the coat sometimes and it was more partly producer thing as well as geographical but sometimes I got the same impression these are fabulous wines
And I think they’re only going to get better and sometimes I thought these are really nice wines and then it seemed to stop and I thought yes they are lovely there’s nothing to take away but I can’t see that with many more years aging that there is something
Additional that’s undiscovered as yet um and I think that is down to having had more rainfall uh in June a couple of times I tasted Wines in chevret STO fan Bron uh or in Lis s George where I felt the wines for just a little bit less pure and precise a
Little bit furry tenin uh which might have been some residual hell damage or if people had vinified um with stems and the stems have got a little bit of hail damage but it wasn’t much and it wasn’t often so I wouldn’t take it as a real negative I would go much more producer
By producer and there are some people who absolutely thrilled me but you’ll have to sign up and read on the website to discover who I really like uh on that on on that front um so it slightly goes against the grain for me I mean f Roman has everything
Going its way and I think it probably is the best appalation in the CI and Sh sh through S of fisa the best wines are as good as anywhere else but there are also some where you can sense uh um a fractional dilution or or or the effect of storm
But that really really is not generalized and I need to work on sh Shaman because that’s the main bit that’s that’s still to come out after tomorrow um oh 10 minutes left and I ought to leave time for some any more questions so what about value um so the issue
Here well not the issue but understanding pricing burgundy prices have gone crazy I thought they too expensive in 2005 and I’ve thought so ever since um but if you look at it from The Growers point of view they have had for Years everybody even if they complained
Part of the year as soon as the prices the wines are offered everything is snapped up everybody wants more private customers come to them and say look I can’t get your wines for love nor money you know can I buy them direct I’ll pay twice you know twice what the
Market price is I just want to have them and so on and so forth or some of them will look on wine Searcher if they are the um here’s my red this evening it is a ladwa 2022 from Capon Gano which is one I particularly liked so I finish tasting and past in
Order um so um all the way through everything is sold through and people have knocking on the doors wanting more um so that’s one thing to bear in mind uh as the starting point the other aspect about starting point is at the moment we’re probably saying 2022 what’s
The difference in price compared to 21 but it also depends on did you go up much in 21 or in 20 or in 19 or in 18 I would really take sort of 2017 or 2018 as a starting point and see what the overall uplift is across that period
Rather than just a direct comparison with 21 and uh I was surprised I didn’t recommend 21s particularly highly at least particularly not at the prices they were being sold at U because people went up in 21 over 20 and they went up in 20 over 19 and they went up in 19
Over 18 most people um and so it didn’t seem to me to be a good value for money and uh and yet uh a lot sold out and people some people were complaining they couldn’t get the allocations that they wanted um so going back to Grower’s point of
View is your starting point you look at your costs and everybody’s costs are have gone up labor costs electricity costs uh all the dry material costs I mean everything you all know it everybody in all their businesses costs are significantly higher a mix of covid political problems etc etc
Um you look at volume which is why things went up so much in 21 and remember also that 19 and 20 with small crops um you would have hoped that things would be stable or even come down in 22 you look at quality and people know
They’ve made really good wines in 22 and I will just touch once more again on the joy of the cat to Bone when I was coming around during the Harvest in 22 um everybody but everybody was ecstatic euphoric in the coat of bone and everybody in the coach new said yes it’s
A really good vintage we’re very happy um but the Euphoria was in the cab bone could possibly be because they had worse damage in 21 of course as well um so the quality is definitely there so it’s makes it not particularly Keen uh easy for people to come down a bit you look
At your peer group people don’t do that too much in burgundy but some do uh and then uh you might see that other people are charging more than you and you may take that into account one grow Mera who’s gone up more than I expected in because he felt he’d fallen behind and
You can look at the secondary market now thank goodness that is falling back again and um my advice in general is absolutely stop chasing after things at inflated prices what you see on wine SE or elsewhere is an extreme price it’s not the price that most of that wine traded
Hands at it’s the price that things aren’t selling at and it includes a few people who are flying kites out there and for such a long time what’s happened is that when somebody has seen a price up on that they’ve seen goody goody that’s the market price and they’ve
Moved their price up to match it and that is stopping happening and must stop happening and a few people who bought wines for speculative reasons at the top of the market are going to get um uh cold shower and um my sympathies are limited um so buy as much as you can
From a source who’s close to the producer obviously many producers in burgundy uh aren’t available to buy from the a door but buy from the the prime importers and Distributors um and I think we’ll see a calmer Marketplace and just don’t accept that renau is 10 times
The price that you can buy it in a restaurant in shaby uh or or various other things or a Bor La go say could be €2,000 a bottle and things like that we need to make sure that side of it is killed off and stays killed off but at
The same time um we need not to send the signal that all burgundy is much too expensive and to stop buying from people in burgundy particularly people with the more um inexpensive appalachi which is where I now do most of my drinking um so things are looking
Expensive when I I I get pric lists in from Merchants I look at it and think it’s a reasonable price but of course what was a 12 is a six and what was a six is now a three uh so you look at the bottle price and you add your your local
Sales tax and so on it can be a little bit frightening um so um um yeah uh I think the prices are broadly my rule of f was going to be if the price is the same price as 2021 then um absolutely don’t be put off if it’s fractionally
More it probably doesn’t matter if it’s anything significantly more then really stop and ask yourself if that’s a wine that you want um and bear in mind also the point I made earlier about you can’t just look at 21 it’s a question of what people have done over the uh um years
VES IM proud that um I I think I’ve earned myself little slug of ladir but um do now far in any additional questions that you might have thank you all for uh listening in I will stay with you for at least another five or 10 minutes it’s no problem I’m
Having a look on um there was a question from um from AA not alcoholics Anonymous but Anonymous attendee um is buly losing some of his typicity moving direction of California p and chard uh yes there’s a quotation Charles Ryder’s quotation about shown in fact with shown CL de Bears um yes indeed I
Love that quotation the same lapidary wine was was part of it um of course things have changed but in a sense they’re more than the same they’re more the same than they are different um different appal some of the Vineyards have definitely changed but I still think for most of the Vineyards
Which are important enough to have a sort of flavor profile attached to them it’s still that profile but just in a slightly warmer um uh style or a riper style I don’t think yet we have really lost the burundian character of of burgundy but it is danger um you know we
Are finding year year after year being either the warmest ever or or second warmest or in the top an for um and we haven’t succeeded in putting the breaks on and even when we do there is the the stopping time and it’ll take another 20 years after we stop it things going up
For um everything to balance out I suspect um Caroline wonders if the rightness brought by the vage is going to impact ageability I don’t know no I up to now I’ve thought probably not um maybe a bit in the whites not so much in the Reds um so so far I’ve gone
On thinking that everything is is is going to surprise us how long I deliberately put slightly shorter drinking dates in in um uh for the 2022 so they they start not too far down the road because they are accessible and only sort of sort of the grandest of vintages and I suggesting Beyond
2040 but knowing perfectly well I that’s only 18 years after the Harvest and if you go back 18 years U from now you get 2004 uh or 2005 2005 is are still too young 2003s have held up 2002 is fine for drinking 99 is still a bit young 96
Is I’m holding 93s I’m drinking but you know there are a whole load of vintages more than 20 years old which I’m still completely happy to drink um so that so so so that’s my thought at the moment it’s something that we have to bear in mind and keep uh um thinking about
It so um some oh that’s an interesting question from the late or who’s returned to this earth I was signed in as or wanting to know the most surprising Vineyard in 22 in terms of quality good surprising and not so good surprising um I found and I didn’t notice it while I
Was tasting it but when I come to read my notes and and and sort of fine-tune the scores Vineyards called sham haven’t done as well this yearo sham and Sham shatan have been a little bit behind their immediate neighbors um I can’t haven’t quite thought of why
That should be but uh but I mentioned that um surprised by how good well I mentioned punin in general uh I’ve actually got as well five stars in ladis in both colors I really like ladis as an appalation it was so unfashionable for the longest time to
The extent that quite a few of the Premier crews in lad are labeled as Alo cotor Premier crew but I much prefer the lad Al course on Premier cruise to the ones further around the hillside where you have much rougher tanins um so so um uh and Je asks is there a vintage
Where vage appellations is it a vintage where vage appellations RS will be punching above their weight um I’ve also asked myself that question and I I found it more relating to individual producers I don’t think it is all that obvious because the bgo have done really well
Down on the lower land uh where there is enough water supply some producers I clearly have a preference for their Village and single Vineyard leod more than either side in other people it’s the top Premier Cruise which is Sean so it hasn’t I haven’t got an overall figure on that um overall rating
On that well um I’m just having a look uh Eric interesting question there are you seeing more wine makers looking to sell direct or trying to negotiate deals with importers they split the profits above a certain Lev I know of at least a few that started doing this yes it’s it’s a
Reaction to the supercharged secondary market and if that calms down then maybe they will rethink any system has got drawbacks but it is true that some people are saying the old fashioned classic distributor isn’t working so well and how can we reach the um private customer direct they still have to have
A middleman because it is just a complete nightmare if you say well I’m going to sell everything direct to my private customers they’ll all want to come and taste they’ll all want to come and visit and instead of having the odd favorite private customer who comes by
Plus a dozen importers and and a few smas you’re going to have several hundred if not thousand people all wanting to come and visit you and getting in the way so um I don’t think many people will be selling sort of sell a door but there is a move now to uh
Working with people who themselves will find some route of going direct to Market finding a way that establishes what should be the price for the wine and then splitting the upside and that with the producer it’s a possible model uh and it it it’s unproven but it’s interesting for sure good good good
Um no I think Tom I’ve answered your question about s aging C I answered that with somebody else oh yeah um had did go fair in 2022 yes it did uh lots of lovely Alig goes and of course the thing is in these hot conditions when the charday might threaten to get override
Aligot sails into a wonderful position and I’m hoping that it will become more possible to include aligot as a a mix in your um grape field blend in even famous Vineyards uh and then as we see that it doesn’t in any way detract from the
Quality of the wine um but it does bring you R this at lower alcohol levels then I think it’s an easy way to go if global warming threatens to take over in burgundy it’s going to be a problem for the Reds I cannot see our grae Vineyards
Being anything like as exciting with any other red grape but I see no reason why aligot shouldn’t be the future uh in whites chard also is tolerant of higher temperatures we know great Wines in California Australia and so on and so forth growing at hotter ambient temperatures and drer uh so Chard is
Still got a good um role to play for quite a while uh and Julian yeah yes shamb M did well and Bomar which is a vine which suffered in 18 especially in sum 20 didn’t suffer so uh yeah um uh no no problem with that good good good um well I think I’m
Going to there’s some uh um long cook duck legs awaiting me um and uh oh dear more more things on the chat at so uh however I think we’re going to leave it there so U really really kind of you all to join um we will find moments later in
The year to do other um uh sessions like this when there are particular talking points which were of interest uh I I know that most of you will be signed up to the website but if not please do and uh I will try to catch up with all the things which I haven’t
Quite caught up with and a big thank you to my colleague who is behind the scenes managing everything for me and I’m off to Hong Kong on Tuesday uh two weeks there with with lovely wine dinners all the time which should give me lots more
Things to write up on the website but uh I will be continuing to write up pasting notes all the way through and I look forward to seeing you again soon so bye-bye with my non-damaged hand bye
1 Comment
Fantastic insights as always Jasper