By Aaran Eccles
Approx. 5-minute read
Everywhere you look in the Côte d’Or, Burgundy is changing — and for the better. The wines have never been of higher quality, and this is thanks to the dedication of producers the length of the golden slope committing to a quiet evolution of viticulture and winemaking. Gone are the days of striving for ripeness and the maximum yields possible. Instead, there is an understanding that vineyards need to be cared for to maintain vine balance, and in the winery, that ferments are not overworked or marked by heavy oak. Elegance and purity of fruit are now the key aims of producers to make sure their wines have a sense of place and show exactly where they come from. I’m reminded how lucky Corney & Barrow are to work with the best domaines striving for quality!
Tressage in the summer, Adam Brett-Smith in his natural environment
During a week’s trip to Burgundy in November, tasting the 2023s meant I had ample opportunity to get into the vineyards to see some of the changes taking place. Organics are one of the pillars of sustainable viticulture, and vineyards are alive with cover crops alongside vines where once there was bare earth stripped back by pesticides and over-eager ploughing. The understanding that a vineyard with healthy competition for the topsoil encourages the roots of vines to dig deeper into the poorer nutrients of limestone and clay below has seen many vignerons change the way vines are trained in order to maximise terroir expression in their wines. Among the names at the forefront of this is Loïc Dugat of Domaine Dugat-Py, who trains vines in a high trellis system, not trimming the top shoots and arching the canes to encourage energetic root growth deep into the soil, up to 10 metres deep. By raising the canopy height to over two metres, the vines are now less stressed, and the resulting fruit produced is brighter with finer tannins. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but this is quite the innovation to implement to vines over 70 years old and it is noticeable in the bottle — where once Dugat-Py wines were highly structured in youth, there is an open and velvety feel to the wines of the most recent vintages and I love to show the results to friends who previously wouldn’t open a bottle before at least a decade of age. It is also quite easy to spot vineyards where tressage is employed because the vines stand taller than even our own Adam Brett-Smith!
Commitment to organics and ploughing top soil in the hallowed Romanèe-Conti
Individually staked vines or echalas in Vosne-Romanèe
Another viticultural improvement that stands out in Burgundian vineyards is the move to échalas, or individually staked vines. A pole supports the vine so it can grow taller than would have been previously possible. Louis Trapet of Domaine Trapet is adamant that training the vines in this way ensures nutrients are channelled into the berries rather than the leaves during the growing season. With over 50,000 échalas now installed by Domaine Trapet alone over the past couple of years, it’s almost as if being transported to parts of the Rhône Valley where this practice has been commonplace to protect vines from fierce wind and curtail soil erosion in steep vineyards. The échalas system also tends to reduce potential alcohol by half a percentage, a key help in warmer vintages that we have seen recently.
Olivier Lamy running the rule over his excellent wines
Looking out to Saint-Aubin and 30,000 vines per hectare in Derrière chez Edouard
And if installing 50,000 poles and training vines around them sounds difficult enough, try planting 50,000 vines within a single hectare! That very much seems the ideal of Olivier Lamy of Domaine Hubert Lamy who is a key proponent in the movement to higher density plantings. Haute Densite has become the signature denoting vineyards such as Saint-Aubin Premier Cru Derrière chez Edouard, where there are now 30,000 plants per hectare, reflecting a move back to over 100 years ago when vine density was reduced so tractors could enter the vineyard. Olivier Lamy believes high-density planting results in smaller, more flavourful, rich berries. This is clear to see in the glass with mineral wines expressing the intensity of such concentrated bunches.
The changes of this evolution are clear to see in the vineyards of Burgundy, but that isn’t where the innovation ends. Winemakers are increasingly moving towards wines that have bright fruit and silky tannins, where once sterner structures built to last well over two decades were the aim of the game, a tough one to taste from barrel! A buzzword in the cellars we visited was a move to ‘infusion’ rather than overworking, and bunches now start with a maceration before cooler fermenting temperatures, meaning fresh fruit perfume exudes from the wines rather than any baked over-ripeness emerging from heat over 30 degrees. An easy comparison to this would be making tea without squeezing the teabag too much, no hard tannins and a delicious cup of tea (do not add milk to your wine).
Botti in Burgundy, a Piedmont twist!
Carillon Wine Globes — Gaze into the crystal ball of future Puligny-Montrachet
It isn’t just cooler temperatures resulting in the velvety and pure wines of the past decade. There has been a reduction in new oak masking fruit and a move to alternative ageing vessels including ceramics and glass wine globes, quite the new wave fashion! François Carillon has been experimenting with wine globes and now uses a small proportion in many cuvées to preserve freshness and fruit purity. I can only agree this has added another dimension to wines after tasting many premiers crus which had an almost electric freshness to them. Oak still reigns supreme, but it is fascinating to see the willingness of many producers to push boundaries and experiment. As one elder statesman of Burgundy replied when I asked why there was a Piedmont-style barrel in his cellar, “They copied us for so long, I decided to copy them!”
It is all refreshing to see that in a region which could have easily rested on some hard-won laurels, there is still a passion for improving wines from an already high standard. Of course, it is easy to talk about technical advances in the vineyard and the winery, but the best way to see the quality is by opening a bottle from our producers and seeing for yourself how these are some of the best wines in the world. The wines of Burgundy have truly never been better, and there is not a shade of luck about it!
Read our Burgundy 2024 vintage report here