The Consistently Delectable 2014 Red Burgundies

Two thousand fourteen is a delicious midweight vintage with alluring fruit, juicy supporting acidity, expressive terroir character, supple tannins and considerable early appeal. Best of all, the wines display an attractive natural balance and elegance, and should offer at least medium-term ageability. It’s a more consistent vintage in quality than 2013, even if, for this taster at least, the high points in 2013 are more compelling (I will publish a separate report on the 2013s in the coming weeks). If there’s an Achilles’ heel to the 2014 vintage, it is the generous crop levels on the Côte de Nuits: some wines are charming and appetizing but lack the intensity for greatness. And, of course, the Côte de Beaune, hit hard by hail in late June, is much more of a mixed bag, but here there are some very concentrated wines that merit buying and cellaring. 

Romanée-Saint-Vivant, Vosne-Romanée

The 2014 Growing Season

Following an unusually warm, dry winter, the flowering in 2014 was very early and mostly successful, beginning in late May, with even the latest-flowering Pinot vines finishing by around June 12. Some of the first vines to flower were affected by windy conditions, which caused some millerandage (shot berries, or hens and chicks), and a few growers reported coulure (grape shatter). But after the favorable start came a widely destructive hailstorm on June 28, which was most damaging on the Côte de Beaune (especially in Beaune, Pommard and Volnay) but also had an impact as far north as Vosne-Romanée and Chambolle-Musigny. Another hailstorm on July 25 caused some damage farther north, especially in Marsannay.

Following the hailstorm, July and most of August brought mediocre weather, including recurrent rain and significantly fewer sunshine hours than average, so that the ripening process slowed dramatically. Some growers who thinned their vines after the hail to prevent against rot from the continuing showers saw their fruit affected by a sharp heat spike in mid-July. While most of the hail-affected grapes fell off the vines in the weeks after the storm, damage to the leaves delayed ripening in many parts of the Côte de Beaune. In some spots, the grape skins were swelled by rain, leaving them more vulnerable to botrytis later on.

This year many vineyards—as well as other fruit trees, particularly cherries—were affected by an outbreak of Drosophila suzukii (vinegar flies, which are associated with acid rot in the grapes). Where red grape skins were not sufficiently thick, the flies were able to penetrate the berries to lay their larvae, and acetic acid was often the result. The Drosophila suzukii were much more likely to be found in vineyards located near orchards, houses, walls and gardens, in flatter, more humid sites and in vineyards protected from wind. (These flies, incidentally, are primarily attracted to red fruits and thus were a not an issue for Chardonnay in Burgundy.) Grapes with thinner skins were more vulnerable to the flies; the most conscientious growers went into their vineyards in late August or early September to eliminate damaged fruit, with most of them maintaining that problem areas were easy to find as the afflicted vineyards smelled strongly of vinegar. Growers also carried out a strict selection in the winery to eliminate grapes beset by acid rot, but that was a little late in the process as the bad grapes could easily affect the good ones.

The road to Clos Vougeot

Harvest 2014 

Happily, the weather took a miraculous turn for the better at the end of August, and the next month brought a mostly drier northeast breeze and warm weather, with the nights cool enough to allow the grapes to retain healthy levels of acidity. In contrast to the two previous months, September enjoyed significantly more sunshine hours than normal. Grape sugars began to move higher again as the ripening process picked up momentum. The majority of the growers I visited this fall on two tours in November and December began harvesting between September 13 and 16, with some starting a day or two earlier and others up to several days later. Most reported little or no problem with gray rot, which was a pleasant surprise as the summer had been so damp.

As the ripening process had been drawn out by the mediocre summer conditions, many vineyards benefited from slightly longer than average hang times, which contributed to phenolic ripeness. (The very late 2013 season displayed a similar phenomenon: ripening proceeded very slowly as the days grew shorter at the end of September.)