Don’t Rain on My Parade: Mâconnais 2019/2020

BY NEAL MARTIN | NOVEMBER 11, 2021

You could feel the volatility in the air. On 21 June, the summer equinox, I spent the morning touring Mâconnais, examining multitudinous vineyards, refreshing myself with its diverse array of terroirs, and absorbing the picture postcard landscape. The air was humid and sticky, hot in the tropical sense of the word. We stopped for a quick lunch in the village of Fuissé. By then, the sky was ominously overcast. Something was brewing. The heavens opened just as I arrived at Domaine de Beauregard. Since 2007, proprietor Frédéric Burrier has been instrumental in the campaign to promote Pouilly-Fuissé’s most propitious vineyards to Premier Cru status. On the first floor, I began tasting the wines. I was broaching the third, maybe fourth, when the sound outside changed pitch. Walking over to a large first-floor window, I could barely see more than 10-meters away. Without exaggeration, a hailstorm of biblical proportions was lacerating the vines outside. Silent and stoic, Burrier stood at my side, knowing only too well the damage being wrought.

“I can come back another time,” I told him, struggling to find the right consolatory words. “You must have a lot to do.” 

“There’s nothing I can do. What’s done is done,” he replied, astoundingly sanguine, before advising that we should finish the tasting.

It felt in bad taste to take a photo of the actual hailstorm. This was taken as I was leaving Château de Beauregard. You can see at the bottom, the torrent of turbid brown rainwater making it rather difficult to get back to my car. 

When I departed an hour later, the courtyard was inch-thick in melting bullets of ice. I asked Burrier about the extent of the damage in early October. “The global average yield on our Pouilly-Fuissé and Saint-Véran vineyards is about 25 hl/ha, our smallest production since 1981. The worst, as we anticipated, was the hill of Fuissé, including 1ers Crus Vignes Blanches & Ménétrières, with 7-hl/ha, a bit better in Pouilly with 15-hl/ha in Les Reisses and Château du Clos. In Milly and Viré-Clessé, it was better than expected, with 40-hl/ha.” The hailstorm was one more episode in an already tumultuous growing season. Because 2020 marks the first vintage that the region has its own Premier Crus, and just as Mâconnais growers are producing better wines than ever and they should be celebrating long overdue recognition, this misfortune is compounded by wretched timing.

The famous Roche de Solutré in the Mâconnais.