Part 1: 2021 Mainly Mâconnais – Sept 2022
Part 2: 2021 Central Burgundy – Oct 2022
Part 3: 2021 Chablis – Jan 2023 (Here)

Right – unsurprisingly, this is how the 2021 vintage in Chablis will be remembered.
Image 08h30 06 April 2021, -8°C in Bougros grand cru.

Tell me about the wines!

2021 is a vintage of scarcity – in the round, it’s barely half an average vintage – not since 2016, 2003 or 1991, depending on the sectors, have the volumes been so low.

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 they are wines with the potential to put a smile on anybody’s face!

I can paint a picture of what I like about the vintage, describing ‘the average’ wine but the truth is more granular – these are wines that have changed and are continuing to change as they go (went) through elevage – and that change has been, anecdotally, massively beneficial and is, at the time of writing, certainly not over at many domaines:

“What the vintage is: Wines that are a little deeper yellow coloured – not tinged with green – this is due to the presence of some harvest-time botrytis. Aromatics that only rarely show the exotic and apricot that botrytis can bring, rather they have good purity and are very citrus, sometimes impressively saline too. In the mouth you find balance despite vivacious energy and again predominantly citrus fruit, now aided and abetted by minerality and some salinity – there is much precision and the wines rarely lack length. They were often structured – you could say chiselled – but they were rarely austere. Indeed, I found plenty of ‘vins-dangereux’ ie wines that I might drink far too quickly today! Remember how relatively austere a young Petit Chablis once was? – it certainly was prior to 2015 – well, despite the cooler, wetter vintage of 2021, this is a trait that has not returned…

“What the vintage is not: Whatever the yields might tell you (lower on this page) this is rarely a vintage of concentration – 2 to 3 vines with almost no yield followed by a vine with an almost normal yield is not concentration, though the average yield may, reasonably, lead you to conclude otherwise. But give me intensity over concentration any day and these wines tend to have plenty. This vintage is far from the most consistent – when comparing domaines – the stage of elevage speaks volumes but so do the choices at harvest time; some domaines brought everything in at 11-12.5° whereas others were more in the 10-11° range – most domaines admit to using sugar though the degrees vary enormously. The strong zesty character of the last three (hot) vintages has been significantly attenuated but often, it seems, that has been to the advantage of their perceived salinity. It’s the second vintage in a row where I find some pyrazine* notes. It’s a much rarer incidence than in 2020 though – fortunately! Of course, what this vintage is also ‘not,’ is freely available. Already a year ago, many domaines were reporting that all their 2021s were reserved – finding some 2021 wines locally in Chablis was already a rarity in January 2023!

“I feel that I noted more ‘great or bravo’ wines in 2020 than in 2021 – but given all those late-arriving pyrazine notes in the 2020s, including many that I thought ‘clean’ before bottling – so bought – I think we can take that metric with a pinch of salt!

*Note: less than 10% of people are sensitive to pyrazines, I just happen to be extra sensitive!

Of course, the devil is always in the detail, so for individual wines, I always encourage you check the report of a particular producer.

Any other details?

Of course, and in every vintage:

• 2021 is yet again – and seemingly like the whole of Burgundy – a vintage where you will hear over and over again, the word ‘classic.‘ And like everywhere else, I would council with the qualifier, a modern classic. Whilst it’s fair to point out that the maturity was lower here in Chablis than most of the rest of Burgundy, it’s still significantly higher than would have been the case 20+ years ago when growers would have patted themselves on the back if they passed the 10° mark.
• Like the rest of Burgundy – the 2021s started to show their possibilities both begrudgingly and slowly during elevage. Meagre and sharp to start but all domaines remarked on how they evolved through elevage – some delaying further the bottling as the wines grow and grow to fill the glass. I would take with a pinch of salt any tasting notes taken before the 2022 harvest.
• Potentially, the ripeness could have been higher, but following some weekend rain – maybe 1 week before many thought they would start harvesting – botrytis began to develop. Not the explosion of botrytis that was seen after rain in 2013 – and those 2013s remain rather tasty if still, a little non-standard – but enough to have the producers rushing into the vines to harvest.
• More about the botrytis in 2021: Botrytis often uses the alias of ‘noble rot,’ and is the staple of sweet wines. Dry wines can tolerate a little but producers try to avoid it. Botrytis didn’t start everywhere in Chablis – but it reared its head in most places. Vincent Dauvissat’s explanation is a good one: “The outbreak came a little earlier than I’d planned to harvest but things were clearly not going to improve so we started to harvest. What helped us a lot was, of course, triage. Additionally, we were fortunate that the skins of the grapes were not so hard or thick in 2021, which allowed me to press the grapes quickly but still gently, so avoiding large-scale ‘contamination’ of the must as the juice was extracted so easily. To compare, such an outbreak would have been much more problematic in 2020 as the skins were harder and, hence, we had to press the grapes harder to extract the juice – we would have struggled to avoid a strong contamination with botrytis in such a scenario.“
• Particular attributes of 2021 – part 1: Creaminess.
  It’s not every wine – indeed it’s hardly one in 10 – but a certain creaminess can be found in the middle and finishing flavours of many. I had simply noted it at a number of domaines but it was only something that I further questioned when a producer told me – ‘Oh no, there’s no oak in the elevage here!‘ Getting to the bottom of things came a potential explanation; There was quite a lot of malic acidity at harvest, so it follows that when this was converted to lactic acid (during the malolactic fermentation – MLF) there was also plenty of extra lactic acid in the wines. A convincing argument, I think.
• Particular attributes of 2021 – part 2: Sweet-Sour wines.
  Again it’s not every wine, and again, perhaps hardly one in ten – but there was an often-seen sweet-sour style to the flavours and energy of some wines. I think we can more easily ascribe this to the frost. Not all the first buds were lost to the frost as not all the vines had sufficiently developed buds – so some made it through. A lot of the opposing buds – the second generation – came through to replace losses – even some of the third generation! Of course there were a couple of weeks difference in maturity between the first that were ready and the second. Clearly, 99.9% were harvested together – one producing the sweet and the other the sour…
• The acidity is good but rarely sharp in this vintage – a pH of 3.1-3.15 seems to be the norm.
• 2021 is a vintage where even blind, it is just so easy to see the step up in appellation – ie from PC to Chablis, or to 1er, or to grand cru – you will get what you pay for in 2021 – but don’t worry if you can’t find any grand crus to buy – the Petit Chablis tend to be be absolutely delicious!

A Market Perspective:

I won’t labour the points – much of what I wrote last year remains the case – I will just include, I think, the most salient point:

• For the first time in many years, the Chablis producers are able to achieve price increases – as much as 15% – yet given the lower pricing of wine from this region vs other parts of Burgundy you are likely to have more problems finding wine than actually paying for that wine.

Because everyone loves lists:

Of-course the relative position of respective domaines in their elevage has an effect on how brilliantly – or not – their wines show. In January, from about 60 domaines visited, here are my top 10 highlight domaines – roughly alphabetically – and with an array of styles:

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. And from the 2012-2018 vintages that I’ve reviewed in Burgundy Report, not much has changed in the last 12 months; 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 with great joy – Petit Chablis and Chablis 2017 remain excellent too. I’ve been disappointed with most of the 2020s I bought, only a single cuvée remains pure and clean – i.e. without pyrazine…

Enjoy if you have any or all of those – except maybe the 2020s!

A little 2021 Vintage Weather Background:

As in so many recent years, the 2020-2021 winter was a mild one – January and February temperatures often in the teens °C, though January was a very wet month. There was a cold snap early in March but then the temperatures rose – and how they rose!

I was in Chablis during the last week of March and the first of April 2021. After my last visit on Tuesday 30^th March I parked above Les Clos, changed into shorts and a t-shirt for an easy 10km run – the temperature was hot – 28°C at 5pm. One week later on Tuesday 6^th April I ran the same route at the same time – but this time not in shorts – I ran in the snow! This was the same snow that would arrive in the Côte d’Or later in the evening. That morning they had registered -8°C at the foot of the grand crus – so that was 36°C of temperature change in 8 days.

What were, effectively, summer temperatures at the end of March had provoked bud-break in many areas – without protection this growth would be quickly burnt away by the ice, frost and snow. Domaine Roy in Fontenay have 3.5 hectares of Bougros grand cru and, just above, another 0.5 hectares of Preuses, they spent around €70k on candles to protect these vines over 5 consecutive nights of frost. As you can appreciate, such a cost cannot be borne by the villages Chablis and Petit Chablis – that’s why they are not protected…

This frost, described as a black – or winter – frost, was caused by a ‘polar air mass‘ which lasted for almost 1 week. A winter frost, such as this, has a stronger effect on the higher slopes than the lower ones – though with extended duration, such as in 2021, there is little difference. The other type of frost is described as a white or ‘spring’ frost. This is the more classically met type of frost in April where the cold sinks to the low points – the base of the hills/valleys – but the air higher up is usually warmer – in this case windmills offer some chance of reducing the effect by mixing the cold air with that which is higher and warmer. The classic windmills had no utility in a winter frost such as in 2021. William Fevre registered from 03-24 April 2021, 17 nights with below freezing temperatures.

Chablis is a region that is well-versed in April frosts – white and black frosts – but the effect was magnified in 2021 by the summer-like temperatures that preceded the frost – pushing vine growth ahead of the norms. At the start of April, there is, traditionally, not much to lose from frost – that wasn’t the case in 2021.

May was cool and wet so the recovery of vine growth only really came in June as the temperatures rose – flowering took place quickly in June in good conditions but it was already clear that there were not many grapes – it was still wetter than the average though, from May right through into the start of August.

August brought better weather and some respite from the concerns about mildew and oïdium.

Rain came during the weekend of the 18th-19th of September. Some domaines had already started picking others were waiting to start – but this was the activation point of botrytis in the vines – so almost everyone was harvesting by Monday 20th.

Annual Production Volumes

*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 will be some also in 2022.
Figures courtesy the BIVB, Chablis: 1 hectolitre (1 hl) = 100 litres

Grower Quotes:

Beru – 05 January 2021

On the vintage:

Samuel Billaud:
“It’s a lovely vintage – there’s not too much sunshine in the wines and they have good acidities and tension – but it was a technical vintage with triage for botrytis – hand harvesting and triage helped enormously here.”

Nathalie Geoffroy:
“I think it’s a purist’s vintage for those who like the freshness, tension and precision of Chablis – it’s just a shame that we don’t have much!”

Céline Courty-Chevallier:
“We like the minerality which I think we’ve lost a little since the 2018 vintage.”

Frederic Gueguen:
“The nuance between the crus in the hierarchy is very obvious – which is how we like it.”

Jean-François Bordet:
“Very classic Chablis, I think, with super minerality.”

On the yields:

Amandine Marchive:
“It’s a very small harvest in Petit Chablis – we have vines on the plateau of Beines where there was a lot of snow – there’s not a lot more than 1,000 bottles – in a good vintage there are closer to 30k bottles. In just one bunch of grapes in 2021 I found all three types of rot! So we had to be very severe with removing the bourbe for elevage.”

Anne Moreau:
“Selling the wine is not as difficult as in previous years – the hard work now is in allocating the wines!”

On elevage:

Cyril Testut:
“We have almost 18 months for the Chablis – time makes the wine – no truer words in this vintage!”

Thomas Ventoura:
“It was just grape juice at the start, there was no real typicity – it was hard to tell the difference between Petit Chablis and 1er Cru – it was the same in January-February. It was only with time in elevage that the wines started to fill out and show their distinctions – with the recent warm vintages we perhaps don’t recognise this initial austerity so much. They taste great now but they weren’t like that at the start! The salinity is strong in this cooler style vintage.”

Cyril Gautheron:
“Some vintages don’t need much elevage, others demand it – 2021 is absolutely one of the latter – the longer I waited the happier I was – I like longer elevage and the 21s just never seemed to stop improving with elevage.”

Didier Seguier:
“These wines started quite meagre – the change and development (positive development!) started from about October. It’s a vintage that really needed to take its time and have a full elevage. There won’t be any early bottlings of 2021s here – it’s not the clients who decide when we bottle, it’s the wines that decide when we bottle!”

Julien Brocard:
“The wines started very citrussy with obvious acidity but they grew in balance during their elevage.“