2020 Bourgogne Rouge

I have been visiting Nicolas Rossignol for a number of years. He is always an interesting winemaker to converse with, full of information about what is going on in the vineyard. He moved into his new winery on the outskirts of Beaune three or four years ago, affording him a capacious barrel cellar and facilities. “I was a bit stressed before the harvest,” he told me, “so we picked from August 23, as there was some shriveling of the skin. I don’t care about the alcohol; I was more focused on the maturity of the skin. I didn’t want bitterness, so I kept tasting the skins to see when to pick. I had to change the order of picking the vineyards. Most of the cuvées are between 14.5° and 14.8° alcohol, and one is over 15.0° alcohol, but the 2020s possess more acidity than the 2018s, so they keep their freshness. But yields are down, on average around 20hl/ha, because there was so much sunlight that concentrated the berries and reduced the juice.” This was a tricky set of 2020s to assess. During the preceding visit, the winemaker had adamantly stated: “I don’t care for Burgundy at 14.5°... it doesn’t interest me.” Twenty minutes later and I find myself tasting exactly such wines. So, where do I stand? I cannot concur that alcohol does not matter if you have balance, because I approach wine as a beverage consumed in reasonable quantity, not a tasting measure. It is going to affect your metabolism whether you think you can handle your liquor or not, and that matters. And these wines occasionally stray away from the tropes of Pinot Noir, transgressing into more Syrah- and Grenache-like flavor profiles at the expense of freshness and delineation, even drinkability. I like Nicolas Rossignol a lot, but at the end of the day, my job can be distilled down to a single banal question: Do I want to drink these wines more than someone else’s? While they might well appeal to those who prefer a decadent style of Pinot Noir and who are indifferent to alcohol levels, for this writer, the growing season just pushed some of the Volnays over the edge, and in this respect, Rossignol was not the only winemaker whose wines were compromised as a result.