Mini vintage summary
2005 – hyped to death, marked by great pure fruit, soft fine tannins and surprisingly good, balancing acidity. The fruit is so expressive, every wine seems like a Chambolle Musigny.
That said, there could be some problems. Some of the every day producers I visited around Gevrey complained about the longest malos they’d ever seen. Firstly, getting them started was very hard and many inoculated. Secondly, 2005/2006 winter was very cold and malo only started up again deep into 2006. So, lesser producers had problems managing space, bottling, etc. This means, some wines saw all kinds of treatment to end the malo so that the wine could be bottled, freeing up space for 2006. The other thing is, some wines don’t seem to have the tannins to age a long time — which only means that they’ll drink well early on.
The only way I can describe this vintage is: I drank a bottle of passetoutgrain 2005 with a wine maker. It was easily the best I’ve ever drank and the wine maker gave it some new oak, because the fruit could handle it. I asked him how many I could buy and he said that American distributors had already been through and bought it up by the barrel!
2006 – hail damage and associated problems, particularly in the north. This means almost nothing for good producers because they all would have had the sorting tables out. Some producers I saw bought serious equipment specifically to help with this vintage, as the sorting had to be rigorous. So, yields are down. The wines in barrel do not have the fruit purity of 2005. There is more tannin and acid, it’s a 2004 style vintage as most of us have concluded. I will buy wine from this vintage because even if you have a cellar full of 2005, you’ll need something dark and brooding to offset it when served.
2007 – weird year so far. Hot April saw the vines spring back to life a month early. May, June, July it poured with rain. Record levels. So, there’s been a fair bit of rot. Around Gevrey, véison is uneven and clusters are very right. This will lead to more rot if there is rainy, damp weather (it was 31C at Gevrey yesterday and it’s pouring there right now). There has been a fair bit of spraying, things are really influx. Even in the best sections of Chambertin and Clos-de-Beze, you can look at one set of rows, beautifully pruned and trellised ready for vintage and right next to it, rows with no canopy management to speak of, dead and dying fruit on the vine. The old adage rings too true: good producers produce good wine. In vintages like this (as opposed to 2005) poor producers may produce very poor wine.
Despite problems with rot, the vines have put on a lot of fruit because of the rain. Some AC and passetoutgrain plots look like they’re growing table grapes! There’s a lot of fruit on the ground to manage yields and rot, particularly in good crus. In good Chambertin plots, I’d say 20% of the fruit is on the ground and probably 10% more will come off before picking (consider that 10% more will be removed at sorting and you can begin to see why Burgundy is expensive to make and how it can achieve greatness unseen outside the region).
Morey fruit looks a bit better than Gevrey, looser clusters, less rot, less fruit on the vine in general.
As I said, it all depends on how much sun we see between now and vintage.
Vintage, by the way, looks like it will be quite early. Some producers are look at an end of August start! Better producers are looking at 8th of September. This difference of opinion could see either unripe tannins or thinner wines, depending on who you talk to.
One thing is for certain: sorting tables will need to be out in force this vintage, just like last year. Despite what might seem like negative comments, the fruit quality is not below par for Burgundy. It is about average at this stage.
