2021 Whites Part 1: Mâconnais, the modern classic
2021 Whites Part 2: Côte d’Or – the modern classic (this report)
2021 Whites Part 3: Chablis – Jan 2022 (so coming soon)

Bâtard-Montrachet (Chassagne side) 09 September 2021

With the first two reports online for this 2021 vintage, you now have the information on 52 white-focused domaines.

What about the 2021 whites?

Energetically fresh wines – usually juicily attractive and far, far, too easy to drink. There is intensity too, if not the concentration of citrus-bitters (amères) and textural finishing tannin of the last couple of vintages.

These delightful wines remind me of the joy I experienced when tasting the 1996s – my first barrel tastings in Burgundy – and the 2007s too. Sadly, both of those vintages were blighted by early-onset oxidation (the p.ox). Hopefully, even those growers who rigidly stick to cork closures will have learned a thing or two since those days. And for those of you who, like me, need a little more reassurance before investing for the long haul – you can be much more confident in those wines that are sealed with screw-caps or DIAM.

2019 was a year of concentration, texture and higher alcohols – due to the heat and low yields of the vintage. 2020 was more taut and structured, with more aromatic clarity and slightly lower alcohols. These 2021s show vivid clarity and super energy. The wines brilliantly showcase their terroirs and the ‘extra’ that you will get as you move up through the hierarchy. They are simply far too moreish and easy to drink which – given the available volumes of 2021 (more on that to follow) – means double penury; There’s only half the normal amount of wine and you are likely to drink it twice as fast as usual!

On the subject of alcohol; you will find the vast majority of white production between 12 and 13° – natural – so the wines are very much modern classics given such elevated natural maturity – though still with less alcohol than the recent warmer vintages. Almost certainly when the lower alcohols are coupled to low but not painful pHs this makes the wines much easier to drink. Many domaines chose to chaptalise a little – rounding up to 13°, or so, but this wasn’t a year of profits for sugar producers.

Some domaines are apt to add some positive spin to their low yields – ‘so the wines are more concentrated‘ – but this is something that I tend to discount; 3 or 4 vines with almost nothing to harvest followed by one vine with 10 bunches of grapes might actually be an average of 2 clusters per vine – but that’s not the same as the concentration brought about by actually having just 2 clusters per vine! I might add that given the choice between concentration and drinkability, I would always choose the latter over the former.

In years of frost, there is often a lot of discussion about the mixing of first and second-generation bunches of grapes – this being a criticism of some wines in 2016. In 2021 there was very much less ‘mixing’ because the frost was just as bad at the top and bottom of the slopes (less bad in the plains) there were fewer mixed-generation bunches of grapes on the vines – mainly it was just the second generation grapes and, hence, more consistency.

As always, a factor of enormous importance to followers of Burgundy; the Meursaults taste like Meursault and the Pulignys taste like Puligny! Like in 2020 the jumps from Regional to Bourgogne to Premier cru to Grand cru are so easy to see – but good luck finding wines in those latter two categories. For what it’s worth – like in 2020 but not in 2019 – this is a great Montrachet vintage if you can bind a bottle!

Growers with (seemingly) short memories have likened the 2021s to vintages such as 2017 and 2014 but I’m much more comfortable with comparing to 1996 and 2007.

Whilst, like in 2020, I’d love to point you to (for instance) Rully as a possible value alternative to a bottle of Meursault/Puligny/Chassagne – the fact is that the Chalonnaise was just as badly hit by frost so there are only meagre pickings here too. At least the Bourgognes and Villages generally have a bit more volume and taste great! Pricing will vary enormously; some domaines realise that they have no chance to recoup their losses with price increases – so have kept their prices stable – some others will have nearly 50% increases by the time the bottles reach your markets – but from a grower perspective, the wines are all presold. Some will trickle their wines into the market or even wait to commercialise with their 2022s and for others, the cellars are already bare.

NB: In the region, the tasting term used for the famous (but now less seen) Roulot-Reduction is a ‘réduction noble‘ – or a noble reduction. It’s a term that sets apart this lovely aroma from the other deep, sometimes rubbery, sometimes firework style of reductive notes – since last year I’ve decided to start using it in my notes too but there’s much less of it around in 2021.

Elephants in the room?

Most domaines found the wines meagre and lacking in interest in the early part of elevage – not just the whites – but all reported themselves happy(er!) after the summer break and certainly after any racking or assembling into tank. It was a style-change for the domaines after the relative opulence of recent vintages.

In 2021 it’s really only one ‘elephant‘ and that’s the volume.

Some domaines used more or less oak than usual – due to having so much less wine – but more obvious to the consumer is that many 1er and grand cru cuvées are missing from domaines’ ranges. You may find extra ‘generic’ 1er crus that are the assembly of multiple locations in their place – but the volume of these is correspondingly low.

Volumes of Generics and Villages are low but not so different to the 2020 vintage – but the 1er and grand crus are massively reduced. Domaines have between 20 and 50% of a normal production volume – and it’s those with the ‘better’ AOCs that are the most penalised. By that I mean that 50% in terms of volume, given the lack of 1er and grand cru wines, might easily equate to 80% less in terms of the turnover of a domaine.

Who to follow

There are many ‘great’ or ‘bravo’ performances on the level of single wines; I invite you to discover those wines in each of the individual visit reports in this publication of my white-wine domaine visits across October to December. Rarer are the domaines where their products are so fabulously consistent that I would unhesitatingly take a mixed case of wine without knowing what I would receive. These domaines deserve special mention*, so alphabetically, the super-8 for 2021 are:
Domaine Lamy-Caillat
Domaine Etienne Sauzet
Domaine Vincent Girardin
Domaine Joseph Colin
Domaine Olivier Leflaive
Domaine Jean-Philippe Fichet
Domaine Antoine Jobard
Domaine Alain Chavy

*You may miss the names of domaines such as Leflaive, Lamy or the Comtesse de Chérisey in my 2021 lists: These domaines have taken the decision only to show their wines in the following year – and sometimes only after bottling.

The yields

Figures courtesy the BIVB

I was in Chablis during the last week of March and the first of April 2021 – both the week before the frost and the week of the frost. I ran the same course above the grand crus – through the Petit Chablis to Fontenay and then back partly on the road and partly through the grand cru vines back to my car. The first week it was 27°C at 17h00 – the second week I did the same course, at the same time, in the snow – and it had been minus 8°C that morning. The same snow arrived in the Côte d’Or later that evening. Candles and trace heating can warm the vines and their buds by 2-3 °C, windmills – or even helicopters – can swirl the air around the vines, trying to mix warmer air with the cold – but when there is no warm air to mix and the temperature slips deeper than -6°C all these efforts are ineffective. Even the water sprays of Chablis start to become ineffective at -8°C.

The problem has never been the cold at the start of April – it is habitually known in Chablis and ‘known’ if less common elsewhere in Burgundy – the problem is the (now) regular warmth of February and March. In recent years, the vines are already growing at the start of April, 20 years ago this wasn’t the case – because of this, they are more prone to damage from the cold than was previously the case.

Chardonnay is the earlier growing variety (vs pinot noir) so is more prone to damage. The volumes realised in the 2021 harvest are historically low – even the Côte d’Or and Chalonnaise domaines whose grandfathers’ memories still function well don’t recall a comparatively small harvest.

What the growers said…

Encapsulating the white vintage:

Michel Pernot on 2021: “One of the worst examples (here) is Folatières; we produced 8 barrels instead of 70 – but at least there was some wine! In Chalumaux and Champs Canet, there was none – here it was completely frosted.”

Sebastien Caillat: “The rain and temperatures were almost the normal average of 50 years ago so we can call it an old-style vintage.”

Jean-Philippe Fichet: “In Tessons I hope to have 22 barrels but had 5. I think the big thing was more the snow than the frost. There was rain this year but enough to support the mildew rather than to replenish the water table – the hillsides remained terribly dry. …I think the 21s are superb…”

Lucie Coutoux of Domaine Michel Niellon: “Chaumée is normally 12 barrels but (we got) only 2 in 2021… We put our love, heart and energy into this vintage – we did our best – and I think we have some reward in the wines.”

Jean-Marc Pillot: “We’ve always seen the frost at the bottom of the slopes but it’s now starting to move up the hillsides! A misery – there’s no Rully or Montagny and certainly no Chevalier-Montrachet…”

Jacques Carillon: “What we have is nice. The problem is that we don’t have very much of anything in the 1er crus.”

Pierre de Benoist of Domaine de Villaine: “It was savage. The frost hit equally the tops of the slopes and the bottom. The buds in Bouzeron had started to move and so were hit. We have 17 parcels in 9 lieu-dits but in 2021 we had to vinify some of them together because of the low volumes. Maturity, however, was never a problem; with only 3-4 bunches of grapes per vine, post-frost.“

Triage – 2021 Corton-Charlemagne

2021 vintage weather

The winter of 2020-2021 was cooler than that of the previous year – plenty of rain though with occasional snow too.

As most of the recent vintages, the warmth came early in 2021. The first part of February was cool but progressively the temperatures rose – 15-18° towards the end of February and much closer to 30°C towards the end of March – just before the Easter weekend. Vineyard workers now seem to habitually wear t-shirts and sunglasses whilst pruning in the February and March sun – though rain arrived consistently at least a couple of times per week! Just before Easter, it was common to see 1-3 leaves unfurled per vine.

In the first days of April, the weather pattern changed, bringing with it a colder current of air from the northeast. The 5th-9th of April was to be a strong test for the whole of Burgundy. Candles were already prepared for use in the vines. The first night (5th) wasn’t too bad – candle lighting seemed more as a warm-up (no pun intended) than a requisite. But the night of the 6-7th brought snow from the north – as described above – and the temperatures were already minus – by 4am the temperatures were often around -8°C – so with the added moisture brought by the snow, it was clearly terminal for those early opening buds. The morale of the domaines sunk.

Until the second-half of May the weather had been very rainy – almost impossible to get into the vines to treat them – and those that did manage it found their treatments washed away by the next day’s rain. Conventional, organic, biodynamic – whatever label you wish to use – treatments in the vines were so difficult that manual spraying with back-packs was about the most efficient approach – assuming you didn’t have too many hectares to treat.

Some better weather came at the end of May and into June with the flowering taking place in decently warm weather in mid-June. It was now clear that the volumes would be very low. The rain remained frequent as was the need to treat against oïdium and mildew – you usually have one or the other – but some domaines reported finding both on the same vines. There was much conjecture as to whether it was the cool and wet that was causing the blooms of mildew and oïdium or whether it was also the frost that had weakened the vines – but the result was the same. At the same time there was hail in Some of Saint-Véran and much of Pouilly-Fuissé’s new 1er crus – ouch!

July, was warm but less so than in recent years – and it was still wet – but August brought some calm and the temperatures and sun to ripen the grapes properly – som domaines even waited longer than they first expected such that they had the best maturity. 12-13° was common – something that, 30 years ago, would have been a dream in a good vintage – yet we also had such ripeness in a cool and wet year – a very modern style of ripeness. Most of the domaines finished harvesting their whites by the end of September – roughly 3-4 weeks later than was the case in 2020.

Triage was a requirement for most domaines – to minimise the amount of various rots; oïdium, botrytis and mildew. For the whites that I triaged, it was oïdium that was the most recurrent theme.
Bill Nanson, 23 December 2022.