2017 White Burgundy: Quantity, Quality and Great Charm

BY STEPHEN TANZER | SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

The largest white Burgundy crop since 2009 has yielded pliant, elegant, pure wines with considerable aromatic appeal and early accessibility, along with the balance and stuffing for at least mid-term aging.

Nowadays, with climate change triggering extreme weather across the globe on a regular basis, the odds that a growing season in Burgundy will be problem-free seem infinitesimal. Yet although the 2017 season predictably brought its share of challenges, producers on the Côte de Beaune finally made good quantities of wine – the most since 2009. Judging from what I tasted during my annual tour during the end of May and early June, 2017 brought high quality as well. These are pure, easygoing, fruit-driven wines of considerable charm, and a good number of them are more serious than that.

Chassagne-Montrachet Clos Saint-Jean is located at the top of the slope

For Once, the Côte d’Or Was Largely Spared 

Burgundy actually benefited from a near-miracle during the second half of April, when nighttime temperatures descended close to, or even slightly below, the freezing mark for 15 consecutive nights, with a low point reached on the night of April 28. This extended cold period, following much warmer-than-normal weather in February, March and the first ten days of April, resulted in widespread frost issues across much of wine-growing Europe – from the right bank of Bordeaux to Switzerland and northern Italy – but largely spared the Côte d’Or (though not Chablis) except for some lower, flatter villages and Bourgogne vineyards where the coldest air settled. (Overall vine yields in France were among the lowest in recent decades in 2017 due to the frost, localized hailstorms, and dry, hot summer weather.)

During the cold period in late April, growers on the Côte d’Or took a number of desperate steps to protect their vines, including burning bales of hay toward dawn to raise the temperature a degree or two and to create a scrim of smoke to soften the morning sunshine, which had burned so many young buds on the morning of April 27, 2016. Domaine Leflaive and its neighbors in Puligny-Montrachet used a helicopter to stir up the air over its vineyards and prevent the frost from settling. Following the disastrous frost of 2016, the Côte d’Or’s (and especially the Côte de Beaune’s) ability to largely dodge frost damage – mostly a matter of luck – was a critical reprieve for many financially strapped estates that have struggled to produce wine in recent years, especially those whose vineyards were hit by hail in 2014, 2013 and/or 2012.

Conditions Were Better Through Late Spring and Summer

After the cold second half of April, temperatures warmed up during the second half of May, and hot, dry weather during the last week of the month and first few days of June resulted in a successful flowering (although numerous growers told me that high temperatures resulted in coulure and smaller berries, and thus reduced the potential size of the crop in some sites). June remained warm and sunny – and especially hot from the 18th through the 27th – but nighttime temperatures were generally moderate. July behaved more normally, with a couple of heat spikes but seasonably cool nights and average rainfall, plus a localized hailstorm on the 10th centered over Morey-Saint-Denis. (On that same day, some of the top crus in Beaujolais –  particularly Fleurie and Moulin-à-Vent – suffered much more severe losses to wind-driven hail.)