I realise that I’ve been negligent in posting, though I do have a valid excuse (writing a book, to be published in 2025 which will hopefully perambulate joyfully around Piedmont, Tuscany, Sicily, Valtellina, Napa, Salta, Patagonia, and all that is French viticulture). So when we needed to find a stop off point en route to the south (and some blessed sunshine, such a rarity this year), Beaune seemed the obvious place.
Most of the drive was conducted in thick fog, which suddenly lifted just before the motorway curled down the hill and sliced through the vineyards between Savigny and Beaune, now donning their autumnal colours, the last golden blast of colour of the year. The hill of Corton stood to the left, with its tonsure of trees, a region massacred this vintage by mildew and all the mess that Nature threw at it. The yields are painfully miniscule, the wine will be rare and, of course, some growers will jump on the excuse to send prices even further into the stratosphere.
The weather is doubly frustrating as 2023 was a bumper crop, and some of us, perhaps the more naïve, fancifully mused that perhaps, just maybe, this might induce a certain modesty in pricing, to break the continual and vertiginous ascent of the last decade. The effects are being seen – though one tends to hear of domaines reducing allocations to their long-term customers as the demand is so high, the flip side is that some allocations are being refused, especially in France. It seems the English will still pay anything to get their Burgundy, but the locals will not, enough is enough. Thus, with cellars overflowing with wine, it’s not necessarily so easy to sell it all, (cult domaines apart) and some of the more over-ambitious (a euphemism for greedy?) were even thinking of reducing their prices for the 2023s.
Mon Dieu, if only!
At the Domaine des Croix (neither cult nor avaricious), I was very bemused to hear of the 2023 rose made for their own consumption. The usual 35 hectolitre per hectare yields in a normal vintage had grown 20 hl/ha in 2023 and as that exceeded the legal maximum, wine was being declassified and produced as, yes, pink… An unheard of luxury. Competition for Provence perhaps?
So just how were the 2023s? David Croix was away on a doubtless very well-earned holiday, but his charming assistant Chloe explained how they started picking in Savigny and Beaune Greves (the jewel of Beaune) on the 4th September and were happy they did, as though some alcohols were a little low (again, an unusual ‘concern’ in these days of ever earlier vintages and warmer summers), the sunshine the week after spiked levels up by a couple of degrees a week which is too high too fast, so your elegant 12’s suddenly became your rather too southern 14’s.
This raises an interesting debate that I’ve heard before. Of course, one thinks that mechanical harvesting is only for nasty industrial plonk, is brutal, compacts the soil with heavy machinery, and pays no heed to quality and selection, though with modern improvements in machine technology and sorting tables, the latter point may be moot.
The point is that a machine can harvest far quicker. If you have your picking team sitting around waiting to go whenever you want, that’s fine, but many don’t, and have to book them for a specific date – whatever the weather and ripeness happens to be. And if you see the alcohols rising uncontrollably fast, can you call them up and start a few days early? Or if a storm is predicted in the next few days? The ability to choose your start date at the last minute when your analysis says ‘go’ and the subsequent mechanical speed of harvest is not to be ignored. The only trouble is that everyone would be horrified if they saw mechanical harvesters in the hallowed vineyards of the Gold Coast.
David makes wines that are always pure and elegant, and as he has a wide range of neighbouring vineyards in Beaune (and Savigny across the motorway) it’s always fascinating to see the differences. He is also a man who continually experiments to improve. It may be the container (size, shape, oak, glass…), it may be the trellising, or, this year, the yeast. He brought in an expert to analyse the yeasts on dozens of different grapes – indigenous natural yeasts yes, but they are not the same on every vine/vineyard and some are better than others. Just as some winemakers prefer to use their choice of cultured yeast (often, like mechanical harvesting, frowned upon), here you can exercise some selective, qualitative choice on natural yeasts. Interesting.
A tasting here is always a pleasure and a lesson in the essential intermingling of forces that produce the effects of so-called terroir: the place itself and the decisions of man (in farming and viticulture). Start with Cent Vignes, on the Savigny (north) side of the town, light sandy limestone, a wine that is round, fruity and elegant, but improved by a judicious addition of stems to give it a bit more structure and interest, to temper the soft fruitiness. Bressandes sits above, and David’s vines higher up towards the forest atop are shaded in the late afternoon, and the wine carries darker fruit, more bite, and stonier tannins. Leave it a bit longer in the hope of riper tannins and you just get over-ripe fruit. Whole cluster would exacerbate the problem, so you must realise that the tannic structure is indeed the expression of the place and what those vines produce. There is also an experiment here in higher trellising and not trimming the apex, currently made trendy by the cult young Charles Lachaux but of course really a fashion set by the incomparable Madame Bize-Leroy.
Travel south to Pertuisots and you have a cooler, crisper, crunchier texture altogether. And then you have mid-slope Greves, the best sun orientation, drainage, and position, giving the wine with the most of everything, (and taking some whole cluster too), as David puts it, Beaune’s ‘baby grand cru’. What is so interesting is that the wines really do taste different. You can see the changes in flavour due to the slope, exposition, shade, soil and consequent winemaking tweaks to display their natural wares as best as possible. A master class in that much over-used and abused word ‘terroir’. At the top of the cellar stairs stand a range of glass cabinets holding the different soils, the difference is marked.
This year I remarked that the baby and the grand (ie the Beaune and the Corton ‘Greves’) tasted quite similar as if their shared name meant something. Chloe agreed, though said that this was not the norm. The Corton Vigne au Saint though was quite different (as usual), lighter in weight, more aromatic in perfume. The Greves denser, more textured and darkly rich fruited, The Vigne more gracefully red fruited. The former is mid-slope in Aloxe-Corton, south-east facing and next to the well-known Bressandes, the latter on the lower slopes of Aloxe, south with a bit of west – same parents but very much sister and brother.
And the 2023s? In general, what the French would call a ‘gourmand’ vintage, an abundant one without the sunny concentration of, say, 2015 or the recent heatwave years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022), but one that is pleasing to drink from an early stage (like 2017), offering lovely aromatics, elegance and delicious fruit. Wines that are just a great pleasure to drink, don’t carry heavy structures and tannins nor require two decades in the cellar. Wines that taste of their origins. When I look at the often-good value wine lists in Burgundy (where several restaurants sell wines at below the retail price you or I would have to pay), vintages like 2017 are a Godsend – delicious wines that you can enjoy young without guilt or a sense of waste. Yes, you can pose with the big label of a 2020 today, but frankly it’s a bit sad. But with a 2017 it’s not – and I hope 2023 turns out to be the same for those who picked at the right moment. I for sure look forward to drinking David’s.
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