Part 1: The 2022 Whites of the Côte d’Or – September 2023
Part 2: The 2022 Whites of the Mâconnais – Oct 2022
Part 3: 2022 Chablis – Jan 2024 (Here)

Subtitled: But where are the great wines?

If scores are your thing, in 2022 wines of 18 to 19 out of 20 are everywhere – but where are the elusive 19.5s…?

Chablis – the high waters of January 2022…

Tell me about the wines!

2022 is a vintage of volume – see below – something that we should never surprise us following a vintage of frost – because the vines, it seems, always like to compensate. Further down this page, you will find more detail about the trials and tribulations faced by the growers but this section is about the wines – and 2022 has the potential to put a smile on anybody’s face!

2022 is not just a vintage of volume it is a vintage of sunshine – it has the highest recorded number of sunny hours.

There is some roundness to this vintage: You can sense, more than taste, the warmth of the vintage but much less so than in 2018. There’s a homogeneity in the vintage but in quality – as alluded to in my first sentence – but not expression, because the terroirs are well separated.

Homogeneity? I may never have seen a vintage with such high average quality – and that’s because the entry wines – Petit Chablis & Chablis – are so damn good – it’s almost like the starting point of quality is nearly excellent. There is a trade-off though – at least at this stage of the wines’ development – I just kept asking myself ‘…but where are the great wines?‘

Of course, you will find them in my reports but I have the feeling I have found many more great wines in all of my previous vintage tastings in Chablis, 2012-2021, including in the volume peaks and troughs of the 2018 & 2021 vintages.

“What the vintage is:
Fruity and attractive with a balancing juiciness that is completely delicious. The wines will be equally appealing to people who don’t know the region, just as much as those who do – there’s enough ‘Chablis’ style to keep more experienced buyers happy. I think it is a very commercial vintage.

The wines show plenty of yellow colour – not tinged with green – but less deeply coloured than in 2021 as the clean grapes were botrytis free this time around. Despite the heat of the vintage, the aromatics rarely show exotic fruit. The staple is yellow citrus, rarely lime, but sometimes with a mandarin-style orange fruit too. The salinity in 2022 is less overt than in 2021 and wines with the ‘iodé‘ smell of the beach are also less common.

In the mouth, you will find delicious balance despite, analytically, modest acidities and that’s because – as in the rest of red and white 2022 burgundy – there’s a juiciness in the middle and finishing flavours that makes the wines exceedingly moreish.

The fruit is not exotic; it is yellow citrus fruit, less often with agrume and zesty citrus bitters (amères) than was the case in 2021. As mentioned with the aromatics – you can find blood-orange or mandarin flavours too.

The wines are delicious but often there’s just enough structure to have me counseling – wait another year or two before drinking.

“What the vintage is not:
It is not an ultra-saline ‘Chablis’ vintage. The moment you move from Pouilly, Puligny or Chassagne to the left or right bank, it is clear that you are in Chablis but it is not the strongest expression. The 2022s have some warmth and roundness of fruit – it’s obvious when you compare a 2021 with a 2022 – but compared to different regions – as above – it’s still Chablis.

Except for the grand crus, the other three levels of wine are only a couple of hl/ha more concentrated than in 2018 – but these wines have more power.

In 2022, if it’s an issue for you, you needn’t worry about pyrazines.

Lastly, as delicious as these 2022s undoubtedly are, there are many fewer ‘vins dangereux’ than was the case in 2021. i.e. wines that will be drunk alarmingly quickly !!”

A chilly start to Chablis 2022

The 2022 Production volumes in context…

For a time the growers thought that their post-2021 (frost) ‘volume compensation‘ was lost as there was, again, frost in early April – the same week as in 2021. (Right: already used ‘candles’ – April 2022)

Despite candles and aspersion, many vigneron(ne)s saw their primary (fertile) buds lost to the frost and assumed the worst. What surprised everybody was the fertility in 2022 of the secondary – opposing – buds. When flowering came around it was already clear that there was potentially a good crop.

The 2022 volume is actually on the same level as in 2018 – which was much derided for its excess of volume – but in 2022 there were 200 hectares more of vines in production than in 2018 (table below), so the actual hl/ha figure is lower for all categories of production versus 2018 – and quite a bit lower in the grand crus.

*VCI of the previous year, an extra volume of wine claimed to fill crop deficits – more info here. The last vintage with some VCI was 2018 but there was also some in 2022.
Figures courtesy the BIVB, Chablis: 1 hectolitre (1 hl) = 100 litres (Click to enlarge)

In 2018 and 2019 the region experienced some extreme temperatures – in 22 it was hot – and let’s not forget sunny! – but probably a year with fewer temperature extremes and less water stress – there were a few small rains, usually just a few millimetres and often at night. This warmth but also (generally) dryness meant very few worries about diseases in the vines – most domaines report having made many fewer treatments in 2022 than either of 2021 or 2023.

Because everyone loves lists:

Of course, the relative position of respective domaines in their elevage affects how brilliantly – or not – their wines show. In January, from over 60 domaines visited, here are my top 6 highlight domaines – roughly alphabetically – and with an array of styles:
(Right, Grenouilles 20 July 2022)

• Alice & Olivier de Moor
• Cyril Gautheron
• Louis Michel
• Roland Lavantureux
• Servin
• Séguinot-Bordet

NB – of course, this list is for the white wines of Chablis – and many of my habitual visits are missing due to the twin constraints of available time and showing some new domaines too. I will be in Chablis again in March to add another 20-or-so domaines.

And wines to drink now?

If you have 2008-2010 in your cellar, then the 08s and 09s are largely ready and you may wait a little longer for the 2010s but they already taste great – re-confirmed with a few recent bottles.

The 2011s still have (~75%) an accent, or more, of asparagus – which can be linked to pyrazines – but if you have good ones (your mileage will certainly vary) then it’s no shame to drink them.

From the 2012-2018 vintages that I’ve reviewed in Burgundy Report, not much has changed; I’m still drinking occasional 2012s and 2014s – the grand crus whilst much easier than the ‘smaller’ wines just now are far from ready – the 2013s, 2015s, 2018s and 2019s are drinking with great joy – Petit Chablis and Chablis 2017 remain excellent too. I’ve been disappointed with many of the 2020s I bought and have tasted – pyrazines turning into asparagus – though some wines are fine.

The 2021s that I bought get finished oh so quickly !!