Burgfest 2022 First Impressions

Part way through our marathon tasting of white Burgundies from the 2022 vintage, someone asked:

“Is this what you were expecting from the hottest, driest year ever in Burgundy?”

The inference was that the wines might just be exceeding expectations.

A few days later, a high score was justified by the comment:

“That’s what you should expect from a top vineyard in a great white Burgundy vintage!”

At some point in the intervening days the narrative had shifted and we had found ourselves getting to grips with the wines of an outstanding crop.  By the end of the week, one of the panel was talking in terms of 2022 having delivered the best ever Burgfest tasting of white wines.

For my part, I wrapped up the last day of tasting with a number of 98/100 wines and a couple of 99/100s.  These sort of ratings are not business as usual for me.

Rewind a week and, driving through the mountains from Geneva to Beaune, I was optimistic about what we’d find as we worked through the 2022s, although even my optimism had not stretched to quite the highs we were to discover.

On paper, 2022 shouldn’t really work, if your expectations of Chardonnay are built entirely upon a binary relationship between ripeness and acidity.  What is too easy to forget is that whites can build structure and shape around phenolics and dry extract and that any number of outstanding vintages that have done precisely this – creating structure and building longevity for wines of ripe and concentrated fruit.  Examples of this might include 1982, 1992, and 2000.  2022 can now be added to this list.

If you just look at the numbers, the high acid and low pH profile of 2021 should have resulted in exemplary white Burgundies.  In practice, many of the wines are excessively fragile, brittle and fundamentally unbalanced.  2022 is a much more consistent, and overall higher quality, year for white Burgundies.

A full report on the Burgfest tasting will follow.  This is more a place holder to flag the quality we found – I get the impression that there’s a general suspicion of the whites from this ‘solar vintage’ but this is unwarranted and you may well want to take a quick look at the market to see which of your favourite domaines still have 2022s on the market.  With tiny crops in 2021, 2024 and 2025, it may well make sense to clean up a few 2022s whilst they remain on the shelves as the reports of this tasting will start circulating soon.

In terms of specific wines, I believe 2022 is very special for the best wines of Meursault.  There’s perhaps a broader pool from which to select great wines – between the 1er Crus of Genevrieres, Charmes and Perrieres, with honourable mentions to Poruzots and Boucheres – than in Puligny where the truly outstanding wines come from the concentration of truly outstanding vineyards.  Even if my highest scores went to wines from Chevalier Montrachet, I do think 2022 is flat-out brilliant in Batard Montrachet where I found some of the finest examples I’ve ever tasted.

Of the names to look for, I was thrilled by the following across various appellations and Crus:

• Alvina Pernot
• Michel Bouzereau
• Marc Colin
• Pierre Girardin
• Domaine Leflaive