After tasting the wines of the 2022 vintage at a string of top producers ranging from small, under-the-radar estates to the most famous domaines and negociants, I can say with confidence that 2022 is the best vintage for Burgundy in a very long time, but…
Normally I would go straight from this statement to describing the style of the 2022 vintage wines and analyzing why they turned out so well. However, these are not normal times in Burgundy.
A generation ago, the region and its wines were venerated by a circle of insiders and enjoyed an excellent reputation, but over the last 15 years they have become the focus of an extraordinary cult, and also of financial speculation and outright forgery. Recent events have moved fast, so first I must introduce you to the crazy context because it determines which wines you and I can buy and what we’ll have to pay for them.
When James Suckling and I started working as wine journalists in the early 1980s, Burgundy was in second place behind Bordeaux in the unofficial hierarchy of French wine regions. However, in recent years it has often been asserted by industry experts, sommeliers and wine lovers that Burgundy is the most important wine region in France and Europe, on Planet Wine or even in the known universe. Statements like that speak of a disconnect between an idealized version of Burgundy and the reality of the region. How did we get here?
If you listen to Burgundy geeks talking, then it often sounds as if the great majority of Burgundy’s vineyards are cultivated organically or biodynamically, that nearly all the wines are hand-crafted by small family-owned domaines and that a sizable percentage of the price is accounted for by the production costs. None of those things are actually true.
On the other hand, it is understandable that many consumers jumped to the conclusion that the limited production of many Burgundy wines is proof that they are extremely hand-crafted. There’s an element of truth in this, because just a couple thousand bottles is a common production figure for Burgundy wines. It’s also not surprising that all the Burgundy geeks convinced many consumers that these wines express the terroir in a way no others do, even supernaturally so.
Bordeaux was the indirect loser in this process because of the perceived industrial scale of wine production there. Of course, these things are all preconceptions and loaded with value judgements. We prefer the facts, and in Burgundy, like elsewhere, they are complex.
Compared with the facts of production, wine prices are easy to understand, particularly when they are shooting up into the stratosphere. From 2016 to 2021, the prices for Burgundy wines increased an average of 30 percent annually. Then, during 2021 and 2022, Burgundy wines (together with prestige cuvee champagnes) were the high-flyers for prices on the secondary wine market, primarily auctions. It seems that some consumers assumed there was somehow a direct correlation between wine prices and wine quality, and this turned the Burgundy Buzz into an insane feeding frenzy.
Then, in 2023, something dramatic happened and the prices for Burgundy on the secondary market fell about 35 percent, and they continue to fall as I write this. Put bluntly, the Burgundy Bubble burst, and as the old saying goes, the higher you climb the farther you fall.
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Sadly, this hasn’t worked through to the primary market yet. There, store prices are at roughly the same level as last year. However, 2022 and 2023 (the latter mostly still in barrel in the producers’ cellars) are both very generous vintages in quantity. Supply has gone from being very limited – the result of the small 2019 and 2020 vintages followed by the tiny 2021 – to being abundant, and it looks sure to stay that way at least through next year.
The simple logic of supply and demand will exert a downward pressure on prices, at least for the wines from larger appellations that don’t enjoy a stellar image. For example, there are 337 hectares of Beaune Premier Cru, and only a handful of the wines from here, like the Clos des Mouches from Joseph Drouhin (both white and red), have a cult following. I suggest that Beaune 1er Cru is one of the prime candidates for a price fall. The fact that around 20 hectares of vineyards here currently owned by Bouchard Pere & Fils are in the process of being sold may increase that downward pressure.
The bubble bursting is not just the result of abstract market forces, though. Rather, it is the expression of a fundamental change of mood among consumers of Burgundy wines. Sure, political tensions, economic problems and various wars are influencing the way people feel about buying expensive wines of all kinds, but the sea change in Burgundy goes much deeper than that.
In June 2023, Erwan Faiveley of Domaine Faiveley in Nuits-Saint-Georges had predicted that “there will be a lot of Burgundy bashing; in fact it’s already started.“ I was tasting the 2022 vintage in the barrel cellar with him at the time, and the beauty of the wines was in stark contrast to those words. That’s the reason I’ve called this report “Beauty and the Beast.”
One cause of this irritation was surely the combination of astronomical prices and very erratic quality of the 2021 vintage. A leading producer who wishes to remain anonymous told me that at the annual tasting in Gevrey-Chambertin, where producers of wines from this commune show the new vintage in bottle, “There were some really poor wines from grand cru sites with three-figure ex-cellar prices. I was shocked!” Clearly, at least some Burgundy fans were also shocked.
Although prices on the primary market are still stable, sales of Burgundy wines around the globe have slowed considerably. So, unlike during the last years, you don’t have to run to buy unless what you want are the sought-after names, where demand always exceeds production. This brings me to the most important aspect of the 2022 wines: they are delicious for drinking now, over the next few years or, if you’re so inclined, for decades.
Finding delicious wines was almost irrelevant for the type of consumer that drove the expansion of the Burgundy Bubble. For them, it’s all about conferring status on those seated at the table, most importantly the person who purchased the bottle. There’s an ugly old-fashioned word for this kind of consumption: label drinking.
In contrast, we are interested in savoring the wines: indulging in the smell and taste of delicious and fascinating bottles. We have a democratic commitment to wine quality, meaning that for us the name of the producer or vineyard site and the price tag on the bottle are important information, but say nothing about the quality in the bottle. This approach has been dismissed as “empirical” by some in the wine scene, but we take that criticism as a compliment. We’re in this to give you our honest and unbiased opinion about each wine you could buy.
So before we get down to the details of the 2022 vintage, it is important to say that if you are not desperate to buy a wine with a particular appellation and/or producer name on the label, there is plenty of good value to be found in Burgundy. That Burgundy is always overpriced is one of the preconceptions behind Burgundy bashing.
COMPLEX BURGUNDY
Having said that, the two perfect wines in this report – one tasted by me and one by Executive Editor Jim Gordon – are expensive grand crus. Like I said, Burgundy is complex. One of these is the Joseph Drouhin Montrachet Grand Cru Marquis de Laguiche 2022, described by Jim as having layered and complex flavors of poached pears, hazelnut and cream on the full-bodied palate where there’s deft balance, great depth and incredible length. The other, the Bouchard Père & Fils Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru Domaine 2022, has aromas of fresh pineapple, wildflowers, flint and wet stones on the overwhelmingly mineral, mind-glowingly intense palate.
The first of these wines was produced from a 2.06-hectare plot and the latter from 2.33 hectares, so these are not extremely limited-production wines. But what led to their fantastic balance?
There was a very unusual combination of weather conditions in 2022. Every winemaker told me the same basic story, but Jerome Flous, the chief winemaker of Domaine Faiveley, put this most concisely. “The summer of 2022 was exactly like the hot, dry summer of 2020,” he said. “What saved the 2022 vintage was the rain in late June – roughly 250 millimeters in Nuits-Saint-Georges! Then, shortly before the harvest came a little more rain and it cooled down. It was almost perfect.“
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So it was water that gave the 2022 wines their wonderful aromatic subtlety and their great elegance of flavor. These qualities were what made almost every winemaker I talked to call the vintage “classic.” When asked if 2022 compared to another vintage, they frequently answered 1990, because of the high quality in both red and white wines right through the region.
Dimitri Bazas, the technical director of Maison Champy in Beaune, made an extremely perceptive observation. “Yes, 2022 is like the great 1990 vintage. However, there is a difference, because back in 1990 only about 20 percent of the wines were well vinified. Now it’s the other way around and 80 percent are well made!“ There has been a quantum leap in technical knowledge in the region since my first visit in 1986, and the quality level of the majority of Burgundian wines has moved up with it.
2022 is not only a gift of nature but also a triumph for modern Burgundian winemaking. As rising star winemaker Frederic Buisson of Domaine Henri & Gilles Buisson in Saint Romain put it, “Growers used to light a candle in the church and pray, but now we do good winemaking, which is a completely different process.“ He also does great work in the vineyards, from what I saw during a vineyard tour.
Frederic Buisson is also an example of another fundamental change that has been gathering pace for some years but came to full fruition in 2022: High-Altitude Burgundy. The vineyard sites of Saint Romain are a perfect example of this, previously regarded as inferior. The Domaine Henri & Gilles Buisson Saint-Romain Sous Le Château 2022 has incredible depth of Amalfi lemon, toasted nut and smoke character. It is simultaneously juicy and mineral with incredible length and complexity for a village wine (with a nonclassified vineyard name, or lieu-dit). It grew at between 320 and 360 meters altitude.
For us, some vineyards below the 300-meter mark fall into the same category because of exposition and topography, giving their wines a striking freshness and vitality. The Maison Champy Pernand-Vergelesses 1er Cru Ile des Vergelesses 2022 is a spectacular red example of this category, with an amazing perfume of fruits rouge, summer flowers and hazelnut puree. It is super-silky and incredibly graceful.
At the other extreme are wines from very warm sites, like the powerhouse Domaine Faiveley Mazis-Chambertin Grand Cru 2022, which has gigantic concentration, precision and originality. In this direction there are also bargains to be had, like the Jean-Claude Boisset Chorey-Lès-Beaune Les Beaumonts 2022, which has stacks of forest berry and spice aromas and is enormous depth for a village wine (with lieu-dit).
When you get down to the nitty-gritty – and experiencing that is a vital reason we taste in the region – Burgundy has a bunch of problems that are not widely appreciated. Many white wines from the region have been suffering from premature oxidation, or premox, since the 1995 vintage, and an industry source in Beaune who wishes to remain anonymous told me: “There’s no serious discussion about it. Lots of people just hope the whites will be drunk young enough, before they get affected.“
More shocking still were the words of Boris Champy, who founded his domaine in 2019 and for whom 2022 is clearly the best vintage so far. “People are building beautiful cellars,“ he said, referring to some of the region’s most successful and wealthy producers, “but sometimes their vineyards look like shit.“
That sounds very nouveau riche! 2022 was a forgiving vintage, but 2024 looks like being a huge challenge due to the gigantic rainfall through the last winter, spring and early summer.
– Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor
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