The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Burgundy 2010, 2003 & 2004

BY NEAL MARTIN | JUNE 02, 2020

The problem with today’s wines is that standards have risen.

Before fulminating on the forum that “Neal Martin has lost it again,” allow me to explain. You see, it can become a bit boring when wine writers are tasked with describing wines that run the gamut of quality from “very good” to “excellent.” In the same way that actors find baddie roles more fulfilling, you can feel a perverse kind of relief when sub-par wines oblige a different lexicon. Of course, if the subject is a new release, you must tell the truth while remaining mindful that we are talking about people’s livelihoods. It is not necessarily the winemaker’s fault. You cannot mitigate a sudden late spring frost, an outbreak of gray rot or a harvest downpour, and therefore I try to temper my language and land the punch respectfully and, if possible, constructively. When the subject is a mature vintage, the passing of time acts as a buffer between winemaker and wine. He or she becomes less emotionally attached, the vintage has long been sold, and consequently winemakers tend to be more honest and frank; wine writers do too.

The subject matter of one of Sarah Marsh MW’s extremely useful Burgundy retrospectives was the infamous 2003 and 2004 vintages. Readers should note that all the bottles at these tastings came directly from the respective domaines’ cellars. Last year I folded the tastings into my “Mature Burgundy” report; however, 2003 and 2004 are so intriguing that I decided to keep them separate. I remember tasting both on release and immediately placing them in my rogues’ gallery. Neither impressed me, for different reasons. The incessant heat in 2003 shaped a raft of rather glossy, buxom Pinot Noirs that translated the sunshine hours more than the nuances of each vineyard. Then the distasteful vegetal notes of 2004 made spitting them out the most enjoyable part of tasting some of those wines. But maybe my reservations toward both had been misplaced. Could the 2003s have turned out as fresh as a daisy and the 2004s somehow eradicated greenness with maturity? Here was a chance to find out.

Two thousand and three was an infamously freaky growing season. The weather started heating up from June, and after a cooler beginning to the following month, the mercury began soaring again, to record levels. It should be remembered that it was not the heat spikes that made 2003 unique; it was the duration of the heat wave that defined the growing season. Between August 4 and 13, the thermometer topped 40°C, and unsurprisingly, the Ban de Vendanges was declared for August 18, just 80 days after flowering. The early harvest caused logistical problems in terms of recruiting harvesters, many of whom were sunning themselves on faraway beaches, not to mention the difficulty of choosing exactly when to pick as sugar levels rocketed and the sauna-like vat rooms risked spontaneous alcoholic fermentation and spoilage (this vintage predated the portable refrigerated cooling units that are now often parked outside wineries in warm harvests). The resulting wines predictably bore all the hallmarks of a hot vintage, with high alcohol levels and high pH levels, prompting many winemakers to acidify. 

In parallel to an argument that I put forward in last year’s 2018 Burgundy report, where I posited that a hot growing season can advantage the ever-adaptable Chardonnay over sensitive Pinot Noir, surprisingly, the white 2003s have generally aged better than their red counterparts, recovered from the stürm und drang of the growing season and settled down in bottle. That said, over the years I’ve found that winemakers speak fondly of not just their 2003 whites, but also their reds. I suspect that is partly because some exceed their low expectations after bottling, exemplifying how terroir can overcome even the most challenging conditions. Fair enough. Personally, while I agree that some reds have indeed matured better than envisaged, when forming part of multi-vintage verticals, the 2003s rarely feature among my favorites. Frequently, I find that the imprimatur of that summer’s heat is too strong, rendering the wines enjoyable yet rarely intellectual or terroir-driven, a shortcoming that is highlighted when juxtaposed against other vintages.