By Antonio Galloni

The 2011 Côte de Beaune Whites: Grace in Motion

I was quite pleased with the 2011 white Burgundies I tasted in late June and early July. The wines are generally open, accessible and delicious right now, making this a great vintage to enjoy while the 2010s rest in bottle. Puligny is the clear overachiever, as it is the village in which vineyard signatures are most clearly marked.

The 2011s are the product of a year that can only be described as freakish. Flowering was a full month ahead of schedule because of an unseasonably warm and dry spring and early summer. Otherwise, though, there were no real problems during this critical period with the exception of a few highly localized hailstorms.  Warm conditions persisted well into June and early July. I was in Chablis and in Beaune at the time and growers were quite worried as they contemplated a mid-August harvest, something that had never been seen before. But Mother Nature has a way of taking care of things. Late July and early August saw cooler than normal temperatures and quite a bit of rain, both of which slowed down the pace of ripening. The 2011 whites were harvested beginning in late August. A general rule of thumb is that vineyards need 100 days between flowering and harvest to achieve full alcoholic and phenolic maturity. The plants got that, and more in some cases in 2011. As an example, in the torrid, scorching 2003 the days from flowering to harvest were 90 days or even less.  Yields are all over the place, and range from the high side of normal to normal to -30-40% where hail was an issue.