BY STEPHEN TANZER |
The very warm, dry
growing season of 2015 yielded Burgundy’s fleshiest, most opulent white wines
since at least 2009. The 2015 whites are clean, pure and rich, favoring ripe
orchard and soft citrus fruits over minerality, as is typical of very warm,
sunny years.
The mood was as dark and
gloomy as the weather on my annual late spring tour of the best Côte de Beaune
addresses. A severe and widespread frost on the night of April 26/27, by all
accounts the region’s worst in decades, sharply reduced the potential size of
the 2016 crop, with some of the Côte de Beaune’s most expensive real estate, including
Montrachet and Chevalier-Montrachet, especially hard-hit. Many estates in
Meursault, Volnay and Pommard that have already been dealing with a shortage of
wine in recent years now face even stiffer financial challenges.
Adventures on the wine route--spitting in the rain
And this spring’s weather continued overcast, wet and chilly well into June, pushing back the flowering and ensuring that the 2016 harvest would last into October, which might expose the crop to a whole new set of problems. Over the course of my two weeks on the Côte de Beaune and in Chablis during the last few days of May and early June, I enjoyed a grand total of about a half-day of sunshine. Happily, the clouds of 2016 had a golden lining, at least for this taster: the weather in the cellars is always pleasant, and I was there to taste a very rich, sun-drenched crop of 2015s from barrel and the classic, refined 2014s.
I will be presenting this year’s white Burgundy
coverage in two installments, beginning with the 2015s in this article. My
notes on the 2014s from bottle will follow later this month.
The Growing Season of 2015
As I noted in the introduction to my coverage of 2015 Chablis, the growing season in Burgundy got off to an early start with a warmer than average March and a downright balmy April. May was also warm and the flowering on the Côte de Beaune took place quickly during the last couple days of the month and a hot first week of June. Potential yields were generally very good by recent Burgundy standards, but production in many vineyards was reduced, sometimes sharply, owing to the aftereffects of the violent late-June hailstorm in 2014. Some growers reported an element of millerandage (shot berries, or hens and chicks), which could reduce ultimate crop levels and accentuate the range of fruit ripeness, and one or two even mentioned coulure (shatter), but those were exceptions to a mostly glorious flowering.
Substantial rainfall during a cooler week in mid-June just after the flowering finished (numerous growers reported as many as 50 millimeters of precipitation) provided the soil with crucial water reserves that would help the vines get through the very hot, dry July weather without undue hydric stress. Some growers reported issues with oidium (powdery mildew) in late spring, but the hot, dry summer limited its spread.
The very warm, dry growing season of 2015 yielded Burgundy’s fleshiest, most opulent white wines since at least 2009. The 2015 whites are clean, pure and rich, favoring ripe orchard and soft citrus fruits over minerality, as is typical of very warm, sunny years.