2011 Burgundy

January is a time for new beginnings and fresh starts so it is an appropriate time to taste new releases. Each year the leading UK importers and retailers of Burgundy show their wines to the press, the trade and – increasingly often these days – to private clients. Any plans for a January detox had to be put on hold.

This year there were nearly 30 tastings spread over two weeks in mid-January, sometimes with five tastings in a single day. The tastings were so comprehensive that the leading French critic Michel Bettane came to London because the offerings here are now even more extensive than in Paris. Hong Kong-based Master of Wine Jeannie Cho Lee flew over just for the opportunity to assess the 2011 vintage.

 It was a challenging year for growers, though there wasn’t the big freeze of 2009. A pleasant spring began in mid-March, with a relatively early flowering period in the second and third weeks of May more or less the same as in 2007.

There were a few storms in May, which led old timers to predict a hot and stormy summer. It rained in June but this didn’t prevent a hosepipe ban when the sun came out again and temperatures reached 40ºC, burning some grapes. Early July was warm and dry too, recalling 1976. But then it rained and the month was much wetter and cooler than expected.

During July and August the weather alternated between sun and rain. Cool temperatures prevailed. In the Cote de Beaune, hail caused some expensive damage to Grand Cru Chardonnay vineyards during July. There was hail in Corton-Charlemagne on 20th May, Rully on 12th July and Gevrey-Chambertin on 23rd July.  

The result of these capricious late-summer conditions was an exceptionally early harvest. Some growers started picking in the last days of August – only the sixth time that grapes have been harvested in August but the third time this century, and earlier than for the sun-drenched 2003 vintage.

The greater part of the harvest was during the first and second weeks of September in sunny conditions. From 1st September it did not rain for 75 days. Laurent Ponsot, who generally harvests late, finished on 16th September, which by his standards is very tardy. Did somebody mention climate change?

Early harvests do not always promise a generous crop, though, and the exceptionally low yields of 2010 – down 35-50% overall from 2009 – affected this year’s harvest too. Overall it was 13.7% larger than the 2010 crop and 11.5% smaller than 2009’s. White wine yields were about normal but the reds were particularly affected, with Vosne-Romanee still suffering from the vine-killing frost of December 2009.

Climatically similar to 2007, 2011 is a difficult vintage to generalise. Essentially, good growers made good wine. But the efforts of lesser vignerons and inferior vineyards sometimes produced unattractive, green wines. Acidity levels are quite low and some reds needed chaptalisation even to reach 12.5% alcohol.

Frankly, it is not a vintage that will excite people. It is better than 2006, 2007 and 2008 but not as good as 2009 and 2010. The sales pitch this year was “drinkability”: these are wines for relatively early drinking and can be enjoyed while waiting for the superior 2009s and 2010s to mature.

Jacques Devaugue, who began working at Domaine de L’Arlot only three weeks before the vintage, describes the red wines as “precise, neat wines with crunchy fruit and soft, elegant substance. They are fine, structured wines, with beautifully balanced acidity and which clearly gain depth and density when we come to wines from the old vines.”

The whites are inconsistent. In Chablis it was wetter than in the Cote d’Or. Some excellent wines were produced but the overall standard is nowhere near that of 2010.

The combination of huge global demand with a succession of small crops means that prices have remained firm. Prices were very high in November 2012 at the Hospices de Beaune, which had its best ever total. Doubtless the presence of the lovely Mrs Sarkozy (whose currently unemployed husband is teetotal) encouraged bidders.

Many estates have kept to their 2010 prices; others have raised their demands by 5-8%; and a few have looked at the paucity of 2012 barrels in the cellars and increased by 15-20%. Many estates are retaining stocks of 2011 to give them something to sell next year. With so little wine available prices are bound to go up.

British wine merchants can hold to last year’s prices because the exchange rate has improved by 5% or so since October 2011. For US buyers the rate has improved by about 2% over the same period, though there was a spike in the final week of July 2012 when the dollar strengthened by 10%. Eurozone clients do not have the ability to leverage against a weakening currency and must swallow any ex-cellar price rises.

It’s all relative, though. Burgundy 2011 is better than Bordeaux 2011 – and much better value.