La Lumière Noire: 2019 Burgundy - Côte de Beaune

BY NEAL MARTIN | DECEMBER 17, 2020

I doubt that The Clash’s immortal “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” was inspired by a wine writer ruminating about whether to travel to Burgundy or not. That said, I like to imagine Strummer and Jones in some dingy backstage dressing room, smoking fags and coming to blows over the best Premier Cru in Vosne-Romanée. Burgundy was my dilemma last September and yes, my indecision was bugging me. The Côte d’Or is the only wine region where visiting is mandatory. With few exceptions, growers are not predisposed to send unfinished samples and even if they acquiesced then their fragility and the fact that unlike Bordeaux primeur, final blends are not assembled, renders it a pointless exercise, literally.

If I go it will be trouble but if I stay it will be double.

By September, Covid figures were ominously ticking upwards. Was it the right time to pack my bags? Why tempt fate? I’ve had my fill of hospital wards. The unprecedented early harvest of 2020 offered a unique chance to commence my tastings much earlier than usual and obviate quarantine rules that the French government might impose. I could lessen the risk by driving to Beaune instead of flying and renting an apartment instead of hotel. The Jedi pull of the vines was strong. 

Tease. Tease. Tease.

Tasting at home has its advantages but the truth is that nothing compares to tasting face-to-face with winemakers and a Burgundy report needs background commentary. You have to feel what’s going on. The only way to do that is to go there. So, the morning of 28 September, I bid sayonara to my family (eliciting no more than a shrug from the kids) turned the car ignition with my entire office loaded in the back, headed down through Champagne to arrive in Beaune that evening - home for the next few weeks. The following morning, I hit the ground running with the first appointment in Clos Vougeot and pressed pedal to the metal for 33 consecutive days, until the fateful night when our restaurant waiter uttered a single word. Lockdown.

If I returned to UK it would be trouble, but if I stayed it would be double.

Continuing was feasible, but it felt morally wrong and irresponsible flitting between winemakers at this time of crisis. I came home three weeks earlier than planned. Though three or four major names would be omitted, at least this precious window of opportunity allowed me to amass over 2,500 tasting notes from over 140 visits. Numbers only tell half the story. The time spent living in Burgundy presented insights and information straight from horses’ mouths. Much of this can be found in the numerous producer profiles. I made a concerted effort to embrace smaller, less well-known producers, which is why I headed up into the lofty Hautes-Côtes, down to the Côte Chalonnaise and why I invested a little more time in Savigny-lès-Beaune. 

The 2019 reds on parade at Louis Jadot and awaiting inspection - a long but informative tasting.

Such is the size of this report, in order not to overload readers, it has been divided: Part One dissects the growing season followed by commentary about the general performance of 2019, before drilling down to examine the Côte de Beaune appellation by appellation. The forthcoming Part Two includes an overview on the market and in-depth commentary on the Côte de Nuits. Although there are a vast number of wines in this article, my job is not finished, and more reviews are imminent.

So alas this year there is no blasphemous preamble featuring God and his cohorts, though one was written, featuring a biodynamic vaccine that only worked according to the lunar calendar. (Pfizer ruined the punch line.) There is no poem because I used up my rhyming couplets last year. 

Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty with the minutiae of the growing season.

Growing Season 

The interplay between a vineyard and the growing season is not limited to the calendar year. It is the continuation of a perpetual cycle, the cumulative effects of previous vintages that set the starting blocks for the new one. Two thousand and eighteen was marked by a dry and hot summer that parched vines’ throats. Vineyard managers prayed for rainy winter months to replenish depleted underground reserves and cold snaps to encourage vines’ dormancy and kill off viruses or nematodes. October to December saw around 60mm of rain per month – relatively low for that time of year. Temperatures in the first three months of 2019 were all warmer than normal, February positively balmy, prompting Anne Parent to remark that it was “summer in winter”. Thankfully, 84mm of rain arrived in April, the first crucial factor that underpins the success of the growing season because without those showers, hydric stress would have been more acute.

The mercury fell in April and heightened frost risk. Bud burst was about a week earlier than normal due to the warm temperatures, mi-débourrement 2 April for Chardonnay and 11 April for Pinot Noir, the average time of year. Temperatures dipped precariously on the night of 4/5 April and given those dates you can understand why it affected whites more than reds, particularly severe in Saint-Aubin and Chassagne-Montrachet. Previous evening’s showers exacerbated frost damage by creating a humid atmosphere, reducing the effectiveness of wind fans and manifesting an environment where moisture could penetrate buds, causing some to rupture. Unlike in 2016, winemakers were prepared and lit up their vineyards with wax candles or burnt bales of straw to create cloud cover, though the smoke blew across Chagny to the chagrin of its townsfolk. Damien Colin explained that this frost seemed to affect more the vineyards on slopes rather than those on flatter and lower stretches of Saint-Aubin. Some winemakers like Alex Moreau and Cécile Gagnard said that they under-estimated the impact of this frost at the time, that it was not visibly apparent and that its affects were not fully realized until later in the season. Frédéric Barnier of Louis Jadot insisted that it affected eventual quantity rather than quality. A second frost episode on 15 April was more dangerous since the buds are more open, but was less severe since the atmosphere was drier.

A depressed vigneron lamenting frost damage in Chassagne.

May was relatively dry, but from the 22nd it was cold, with average temperatures of 12.9°C. June was warm but saw 64mm of rain, which disturbed flowering, particularly for the whites, causing it to take place slightly late, with mi-fleuraison on 5-6 June. Cécile Gagnard of Fontaine-Gagnard lamented the widespread millerandage, where bunches form shot berries, small and seedless. Thibaut Clerget reckoned he lost around 50% of his potential crop due to millerandage and, to a lesser extent, coulure. At Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, the flowering was spread out over 15 days and this disturbed potential evenness that was subsequently exaggerated by conditions leading up to harvest. 

After flowering, the summer settled down and, similar to 2018, conditions, remained warm and dry. Temperatures averaged 20.1°C in June and 23.1°C in July, but more significant were two week-long heat waves, what the French call ‘canicule’, at the ends of June and July. Though temperatures spiked at 42°C, there were only 4-6 days when it remained over 35°C compared to 12-14 days in the infamous 2003 vintage. So, it was hot, but not torrid. Outside these heat waves, temperatures dropped at night, partially explaining why vines were able to retain decent levels of acidity. The 83mm of rain in July limited hydric stress that was more acute in 2018, when leaves visibly curled and browned, though winemakers reported some blockage after the second heat wave. The tap was really turned off in August when there was just 35mm of rainfall and September, just 27mm. Frédéric Barnier believes that these showers saved the vintage by avoiding over-ripeness but certainly the dryness impacted vines on shallower and less clayey soils, leading to a lack of potassium uptake. Some vineyard managers ploughed between rows in order to reintroduce organic matter.

One crucial aspect of the 2019 vintage is the hours of sunshine that remained above average, particularly in August that saw 272 hours of luminosity. Nicolas Groffier described it as a kind of cold light, the kind you get in spring instead of summer, what he poetically termed “la lumière noire”. Nevertheless, vineyard managers wisely eschew leaf removal since it provides shade from the sun, sometimes extending the upper canopy cover. This must be balanced by retaining air circulation to inhibit rot, should it turn rainy. There were some outbreaks of grillure, burnt skins, though winemakers such as Benjamin Leroux and Benoît Bachelet told me that in fact the biggest risk was burning berries after spraying their vines with sulphur. Berries began to colour around mid-July although it needed rainfall on 9-11 August to give véraison a spurt, still several days later than average. August was warm but in fact, average temperatures were slightly below normal at 20.8°C. One important aspect of the growing season is that there was a northerly wind just before picking. Bouchard Père’s winemaker Frédéric Weber and Aubert de Villaine are two of many that believe this concentrated the berries and reduced the amount of juice inside through increased evaporation - more on that later.