Dance the Quickstep: Burgundy 2020

BY NEAL MARTIN | DECEMBER 17, 2021

Côte de Beaune: Aloxe, Ladoix & Pernand | Beaune | Chassagne-Montrachet | Maranges, Monthelie & St-Aubin | Meursault | Pommard | Puligny-Montrachet | Santenay | Savigny-lès-Beaune | Volnay

Côte de Nuits: Chambolle | Gevrey-Chambertin | Marsannay | Morey-Saint-Denis | Nuits Saint-Georges | Vosne-Romanée

Others: Chablis | Côte Chalonnaise | Mâconnais

Warning: This is a long and detailed report to read at leisure and not necessarily all at once, unless you have time to fill (perhaps while interminably on hold with your wine merchant, waiting to confirm your Burgundy 2020 allocation). The Côte d’Or is at a critical turning point, with changes afoot both inside and beyond the vineyard that have long-term ramifications. Apart from this main introduction, readers can peruse individual Producer Profiles for further information. Before I get down to the nitty-gritty, however, what would my Burgundy report be without the usual preamble? 

Introduction

“Monsieur, votre passe, s’il vous plaît.”

God rifles through His robes, locates His iPhone and shows His Covid pass to the official.

“Non, monsieur. Your pass to enter the Côte d’Or.”

God apologizes and hands over the paperwork showing that the almighty Creator of life, the universe and everything is worthy of entering this hallowed wine region. Once waved through, it’s a short drive to the citadel of Beaune, where He tries to book a room at the Hôtel Dieu. It’s full.

“But I’m God,” He implores the receptionist, who shrugs her shoulders with Gallic indifference.

“Yeah. A lot of people say that around here.”

Having booked another room, not far from the favelas that surround Beaune’s urban center of empty second homes and private members’ clubs (currently embroiled in a bloody turf war), God decides to take the tourist train, pulled by a dozen enslaved Bordeaux winemakers. As the train passes the Rudolf Steiner statue made of yarrow and sheep poo, His attention is diverted by a ruckus outside one of the town’s numerous Michelin-starred restaurants.

“What’s going on?” asks God.

“The restaurant just put a two-year-old bottle of Musigny on the list,” replies a fellow tourist. “It’s a bit like ‘Squid Game.’ Customers kill each other until the survivor gets to order it.”

Wishing to get away from the melée, God drives into the vineyards. The RN74 is bumper-to-bumper Porsches and Mercedes 4x4s with blacked-out windows, neon-lit road signs inviting tourists to look at the vineyard of “Nouveau Richebourg” – €500 for a 10-second peek; double for the Grand Crus up in the Hautes-Côtes, the only place where Pinot Noir can ripen without topping 16.0° alcohol. He spots what looks like Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers shimmering in the distance. In fact, they are Clos de Tart and Domaine des Lambrays in Money-Saint-Denis, in perpetual competition to out-glitz each other, so fixated on pimping out their wineries that both have forgotten pick the vines for 20 years.

God heads toward Gucci-Chambertin to meet Burgundy’s only winemaker. Nowadays, the entire process is automated. Last year, Cyberdyne Systems introduced the T1000 Auto-Vendangeur, equipped with 12 tweezers that precision-pick 100 berries per second. They simultaneously analyze ripeness and sugar levels, even stem lignification, so that only perfect berries get a sniff of a winery. Wineries are also fully automated, employing AI-controlled fermentation, maceration and aging in ceramic pods, and scanners that automatically rate the wines either 99 or 100 points, before delivery direct to customers via Amazon drones. God peers into the sky and spots a fleet of whirring machines delivering Montrachet (a monopole of Musk Corp.) to a drug cartel that recently diversified away from narcotics; Burgundy is now more lucrative and obliges less bloodshed. Such is the demand that nobody drinks the wines these days like those fools who guzzled fortunes away back in pre-Covid times. Nearly every bottle is held in a secret underground bunker, along with cryptocurrency and the lost ark, their values traded on stock markets or used to pay off the national debts of small equatorial countries. 

Finally, God reaches the winery and parks between two Ferraris. It’s just a metal warehouse: no windows, no noise, no people. Disappointingly, the winemaker is actually a hologram repeating phrases by rote. Canicule. Mineralité. Infusion. Terroir. It begins to wax lyrical about the 2050 Burgundy vintage and its speech gets faster and faster and louder and louder until God puts His hands over His ears and cries, “Noooo!”

He sits bolt upright in bed, wiping away a bead of sweat. 

“What a nightmare,” God says unto Himself. “The Côte d’Or in 2050. Thank goodness I woke up.” His iPhone pings. A message announces a recent auction sale of Musigny with more zeros than He can believe. He rubs His eyes to make sure. It was just dream. Wasn’t it?