1997 White Burgundy

First of all an apology - a mere 20 whites tasted - I did have another 12 lined up, including some big name premier and grand crus from Domaine Leflaive, however, the mixed dozen were from the same merchant where a couple of the 1997 reds tested for the last issue turned up corked. It transpired that this merchant doesn't provide a credit for corked wines, hence, I cancelled the order - I am first and foremost (after all) a consumer!
Despite the fact that there is more white wine than red wine made on the Côte it is usually more of a challenge to get 'older' whites than reds, so for next year I'm booking ahead for the 1998's as they are already becoming a little thin on the ground.
As far as the 1997 whites are concerned, this was new territory for me. When these were released I was drinking mainly riesling to satisfy my 'light-side' - so no in-built opinions, I just let the wines speak. Also of interest was the spread of 'critic opinion' about the wines, some critics rating quite highly and some not! The most informative online article I found was written by Per-Henrik Mansson for the Wine Spectator - well worth a read. One of the statements from this article that caught my eye was from a "Côte de Beaune winemaker" who said that the Côte de Beaune whites were 'banal', by that he meant lacked freshness. This immediately rang a bell; I remember another winemaker telling me that the key to the 1997's (for him) was to try and retain as much gas (carbon dioxide) as possible while bottling in order to 'retain freshness'.
Given the relatively small number of wines tasted, I won't try and read too much into the results, but what did this group of wines say?
  • Some of the discussion in Per-Henrik's report centered around the susceptibility of the wines to oxidise, and five of the wines confirmed this, from a mild to an 'ugh' degree. That's 25%, and whilst I assume not entirely representative, it's still a lot.
  • The wines which weren't oxidised(!) were open, tasty and generally well balanced, though with lower acidity than the 1996's and 1998's that I recollect. Basically they are enjoyable, easy to drink wines.
  • Looking through my notes, I see 'quite nice' and even 'very good' a few times, but only one 'excellent' and one 'could be excellent'. So despite enjoying the (non-oxidised) majority, only 10% really hit the spot.
General Vintage information
I don't really need to add to the discussion of the weather that was reported in my 'reds' article, save to mention that a number of hailstorms in Puligny and Meursault reduced yields by as much as 50%. Just as with the reds, the weather patterns produced generally lower acidity whites.


taste the wines . . .