Burgundy 2023: an abundance of charm, freshness and elegance

Burgundy 2023: Buyer’s Report

Abundant, generous, but at times complicated, 2023 delivered an excellent harvest throughout Burgundy. While 2022 was almost magically easy, weather conditions in 2023 posed challenges at every turn.

But with every challenge comes opportunity. With pure, energetic whites, and charming, balanced reds, the clarity and expression of terroir on display in 2023 impressed me time and time again during my three weeks of tastings in Burgundy this autumn. Both reds and whites demonstrate where Burgundy transcends: elegant wines of exquisite balance, with moderate alcohol levels and delicious freshness, that display their origins with clarity and purity.

I wholeheartedly encourage you to explore this illuminating, and enchanting, vintage.

 

The growing season: a vintage that danced to its own tune

It’s natural to look for comparisons from vintage to vintage. If we could simply label 2021 as ‘wet and cool’, and 2022 as ‘dry and hot’, 2023 would defy any such easy classifications. It was a vintage marked by its unpredictability, a vintage that danced to its own tune, keeping winemakers on their toes.

2023 started with a warm, dry winter, but with little sun. The rain appeared in March, and buds began to burst in early April, only slightly behind schedule. The months of April and May were sunlit but comparatively cold. Flowering began at the end of May and concluded in June under phenomenal conditions, leading to a huge potential crop.

It continued to be warm throughout June, but the season’s periodic storms, some of which were extreme, commenced early and lasted throughout the season. On occasion, the storms offered hail with localised damage, in Meursault, Beaujolais and the Mâconnais. The summer months of July and August were chillier than usual, prolonging véraison.

Mid-August gave rise to a spike in heat (18th-25th August up to 37ºC), but then temperatures fell again and rain arrived, swelling the grapes with water without ripening them, and raising the threat of rot and mildew. The warmth of the sun’s rays made a reappearance in September – and was searingly hot on occasion (2nd-12th September up to 35ºC). When the temperature exceeds 30˚C the vines, particularly in dry and windy conditions, shut down to conserve water, and grape ripening comes to a halt. Solène Panigai at Olivier Leflaive commented that these spikes delayed the final maturity, or véraison, and made predicting a harvest date difficult and also stressful.

Many estates began to pick as soon as the vines dried out, and had to be on alert as the September heatwave coincided with harvest. Several picked only in the mornings, when temperatures are cooler.

 

The whites: attractively ripe, rich and delicious

2023 white Burgundy is joyful, with enough of a classical Burgundian feel to satisfy even the purists.

The wines are attractively ripe, have delicious freshness, appetising concentration and remarkable drinkability; you can’t help but love them from the off.

The very welcome news is that 2023 was another abundant harvest following 2022, after a period of acute shortage in previous years (and unfortunately more of this to follow, with the upcoming, very small crop of 2024).

And there’s something else in abundance: the wines’ concentration and purity of fruit. In Chablis, growers picked 2009, 2015 and 2022 as the obvious comparisons: fresh, full of fruit, drinking brilliantly from early on (“a vintage that will smile early” according to Benoît Droin), but with the structure in place for ageing. This theme extends throughout the Côte d’Or and beyond, with Chardonnays and Aligotés of fresh energy, fine texture, and beautiful balance, though a mix of 2017 and 2019 was more frequently discussed.

Céline Fontaine was very happy with the 2023 vintage from the beginning. She commented, “nature being generous is a present, this was perfect.”

Alex Moreau, in Chassagne-Montrachet, is further convinced that a big reason for 2023's success is experience. The growers learnt a lot between 2015 and 2022. Vineyard management has evolved: canopy shade on the grapes is a more desirable asset than the leaf stripping of old to avoid scorching sunshine. Additionally, experience gained in terms of picking date decisions, harvest logistics and élevage length and method all proved invaluable for the success stories of the vintage. Alex thinks that 2023 is difficult to generalise, but above all is a winemaker's vintage, “sometimes you do what you want, sometimes you do what you can!” And perhaps the vines are also learning - repeated dry seasons have pushed the vines to dig their roots deeper.

As well as being approachable and pleasantly surprising given the trials of the season, Marc Colin believes that 2023 is a “readable” vintage and very eloquently shows the difference between the various crus, villages and terroirs.

2023 is another excellent white Burgundy vintage. Make sure you take full advantage!

 

The reds: a vintage for everyone

While in Burgundy in November 2023, tasting the 2022s, mention of 2023 was met with smiling faces: there was a real feeling of joy amongst the growers owing to the ample crop. Yet from early on, many commentators inferred that the wines would be dilute, and lack complexity.

Tasting the wines from barrel this autumn, a year on, was an abject lesson in why a vintage shouldn’t be judged too early.

I was very conscious of the variety of styles 2023 has produced, particularly for reds. Whilst the whites are more homogenous - fruit-driven, balanced, approachable - the reds span from lighter-bodied, fresh tones through to structured, darker wines. Alcohols are predominantly around 13%, with the few outside of this being very much the exception.

Some growers felt the warm season gave them the ripe stems they were looking for and ‘whole-bunch’ was the way to go. Arthur Clair loves this vintage for its approachability, it’s “a vintage for everyone.” He felt that whole clusters helped to add freshness to his wines in a vintage of moderate acidity. Others (such as Amélie Berthaud and Mark Fincham) said that due to the sheer volume of fruit, de-stemming was a prerequisite, and that including stems would only raise the pH further.

In reality, I tasted many majority ‘whole-bunch’ wines that were singing, and others where growers had greatly reduced their use of ‘whole-bunch’, with fantastic wines resulting. Both approaches seem apt, and have only added to the diversity of wines on show - it is after all, the spice of life!

A number of winemakers, including Géraldine Godot and Cyrielle Rousseau, suggested that the high yields contributed to the considerable quality of the vintage, with the ripe concentration of the warm season balanced by the year’s large harvest, leading to impressive freshness and purity in the wines. Géraldine commented, “we sometimes forget what Pinot used to be, it can be fresh even in a hot vintage - we are very happy, we didn’t expect to have this balance.”

The moderate acidity meant that malolactic fermentation occurred quickly, many concluding before the winter (often this wouldn’t happen until the cellars begin to warm in the spring). So the wines were easy to taste from barrel, and most growers believe that the wines will drink well soon after bottling. While they will surely be delicious in their youth, and many will indeed be drunk young, it’s a year that will continue to surprise and delight for years and decades to come. Where 2022 was more defined by the hot, dry vintage and arguably needs some time in bottle, 2023 is defined by its expression of terroir, its more approachable, aerial, lifted quality - its fresh and floral notes.

On balance, and if I had to choose, I’d edge reds over whites in 2023, but it’s very close. Red Burgundy 2023 is quietly confident - insistently expressive of terroir, balanced and full of elegance and nuance - it’s easy to understand why!

 

The market: another welcome release

It’s no secret that prices have augmented considerably in Burgundy in recent years, both in terms of release prices and the secondary market. Nevertheless, demand for the top names remains at fever-pitch. With a very small yet high-quality harvest coming in 2024, this trend looks set to compound.

Each year, we see a few more domaines choose to step away from the traditional January en primeur release. This is partly because an increasing number are favouring longer élévages, and feel the wines simply aren’t ready to show or sell at this point. These domaines will release their 2023s sometime in 2025.

But rest assured there are plenty of exciting domaines being released in January, and for many you’ll need to be as quick as ever to secure a case or two.

 

A final word

With Lay & Wheeler’s Burgundy Buyer, Catherine Jaën MW, on maternity leave, it was a pleasure for me to strengthen my connection with the region, tasting hundreds of wines with dozens of producers over three weeks in November 2024.

It couldn’t have been a more enjoyable experience to do so.

This is a truly Burgundian vintage, where the wines demonstrate the infinite intricacies of the Côte d’Or. A vintage of appetising concentration, that is approachable, fresh, elegant and balanced: it’s one to secure while you can. Our offer goes live at 10am on Wednesday 8th January 2025: I urge you to take advantage of these truly fantastic wines.