Through the Other Side: Burgundy 2016 in Bottle

BY NEAL MARTIN | OCTOBER 22, 2019

Among the countless growing season reports I have authored over the years, I have never stumbled across one as complex and at times irrational as the Côte d’Or in 2016. After visiting dozens of winemakers and gleaning perspectives on how the late spring frost affected their vines and their vineyard managers’ remedial strategies, I concluded that 2016 was a puzzle that would be fascinating, frustrating and futile to solve. The idiosyncratic growing season saw some appellations decimated by frost while others were left unscathed and wondering what all the fuss was about. It was even impossible to draw conclusions about how a particular climat performed, since frost scarred one row of vines and spared the next, sometimes without rhyme or reason. Winemakers deliberated over using second-generation fruit, predicating an array of picking dates and attendant blending decisions. Some familiar labels vanished; others were forced to shack up with fellow cuvées in the vat to make geographically nameless Premier Crus. For others it was business as usual. If you did escape the frost damage, then there was potential to create a stunning 2016 red that matched or surpassed the previous vintage.

My strategy for assessing Burgundy in bottle has been based around the two-week Burgfest blind tasting held every May and September at the secluded Hameau du Barberon, just above Savigny-lès-Beaune. Personally, I think that the usual practice of concurrently sampling the previous vintage diverts attention away from tasting the wines in barrel. Furthermore, I find it a less opportune moment to examine nascent wines that can pull down their shutters as the winter cold seeps into cellars. In contrast, the timing of Burgfest means that these sensitive wines have enjoyed a few months to settle in bottle. Factor in the unique opportunity to appraise them blind, and this represents one of my most important and challenging tastings of the year. Unfortunately, I missed the white 2016s because I was undergoing open-heart surgery that week - probably the best excuse I will ever offer for non-attendance of a tasting. Fortunately, the second part of the event allowed me just enough recovery time, and so the red tasting marked my return to traveling after nine months away. It was good to get back to the proverbial coalface.

This tasting included around 260 wines, and for this report I have augmented it with notes from a handful of producer showings of bottled 2016s in autumn 2018, plus a useful tasting in London in May 2019, one of the last before my operation, organized by UK importer Domaine Direct. The latter event included many generic Burgundy and Village Crus traditionally excluded at Burgfest, plus a handful of whites. Minuscule yields and empty cellars meant that re-tasting the 2016s was never going to be easy because producers had nary a bottle to spare. This tranche of 350-plus tasting notes is a useful start, and I will keep coming back to re-taste whenever I can.

Wandering through the vineyards in early September, I spent a couple of hours photographing bunches. You can see how they are small and a little misshapen, though these Les Amoureuses ended up making wine that is easy to fall in love with.

The Growing Season

My original summary of the 2016 growing season made War and Peace read like a wafer-thin novella, so here I will focus on the main points of this topsy-turvy vintage.