2021 Red Burgundy Part 1: The Côte de Beaune – November 2022
2021 Red Burgundy Part 2: The Côte de Nuits – December 2022 (Here)
2021 Red Burgundy Part 3: Beaujolais – February 2023

29 March 2021 – 28°C – One week before the frost and snow arrived…

What about the 2021 reds in the Côtes de Beaune & Nuits?

2021 follows a trio of, historically, hot vintages:

2018 produced very inconsistent wines, sometimes faulty but in this respect, the Côte de Beaune fared better than the Côte de Nuits where there were more black, over-extracted, volatile and sometimes bretty wines.
2019 was a great and very consistent vintage for the reds, and in both halves of the Côte d’Or – fluid, highly successful wines.
2020 in the Côte de Beaune, usually, produced more structural wines – body-builder wines – wines of less flair and fluidity than 2019. In the Côte de Nuits the 2020s were, generally, more successful – retaining much fluidity despite, often, more material than in 2019. Wines for the ages, even if I would (personally) probably enjoy the 2019s more for the next 10-20 years…

2021 itself was still a hot one – NASA suggests that globally it was the sixth hottest on record, before 2022 – even if it was cooler in France! – maybe here we can blame La Niña! It is certainly a year in Burgundy where, at last, we have a vintage where the quality of the wines is not linked to how deep the colours are!

I was asked by a ‘fellow writer’ during the ‘tasting phase’ “But don’t you think that the wines lack a little mid-palate concentration?” Well – duh! – If you are comparing to all the other wines made since 2015 – it’s a no-brainer. If you compare with all the vintages made before 2015 – then not at all – And I fell in love with burgundy wines in the 1990s and it’s from this perspective that I write the following:

Of course, there was frost, and until mid-July, consistent rain to wash away the attempted treatments against oïdium, mildew and even some botytis later in the season. Parts of the Côte de Nuits also had to endure some localised hail. The rain could be very heavy in the Côte de Nuits in June – the small rocks of the vineyard roads being washed down the hillside roads. These trials and tribulations contributed to some very low yields and even missing cuvées at certain domaines, who had to assemble a paltry amount of grapes from different sectors to have enough to properly ferment a single cuvée. The last 4-5 weeks before the harvest – normal service was resumed with sunshine and good light – enabling proper maturity for the grapes – but unlike most recent vintages, 30°C daytime temperatures were a rarity – and there were no days with 35°C.

08 September 2021 – But some green harvesting in Marsannay!
Of course, it was also a rarity – but despite the top slopes in Marsannay being ravaged by the frost – some of the lower slopes actually needed green harvesting – above!

Equivalent low-volume vintages pre-date the living memory of vigneron(ne)s. Some of the oldest memories come from the records of Bouchard Père et files, their technical director and winemaker, Fred Weber, tells “1910 or 1930 – that’s the last time we had such low yields – of course, we only have the writings, nobody here can remember. The biggest insurance for our domaine is the diversity of its parcels across the Côtes – but in 2021 the frost was everywhere…”

Right – 29 April 2021 in Gevrey’s Clos des Varoilles – it was 2-3 weeks after the frost before any new leaves started to show. Anyone whose experience of burgundy wines began only from 2015, or later, will see something different in their glasses with the 2021 vintage. More direct wines with extra (visible) sweeping freshness – despite not particularly low acidities – though with some beautiful clarity of more red fruits than in recent years – and what perfume too – of roses, of peony and, of course, of violets. In some respects, they resemble the wines of the 1990s though with the technical wit and investment of the last 20 years they display more clarity and better textures versus those historic wines. These are wines that resemble the emotions that made me fall in love with burgundy wine in those years. I may have been in Volnay at the time(!) but, early in my tasting tour, one wine’s clarion call of pure red fruit and sweeping depth of flavour left me recalling Denis Bachelet’s 1996 Charmes-Chambertin – a great wine that’s forever ingrained in my memory-bank of experiences.

2021 has the magic that only happens in this place – Burgundy.

The wines are, unsurprisingly, less phenolically structured and concentrated wines than other post-2014 vintages but that has been replaced by incisiveness and intensity – remember those? And there has been a return of an old friend; old-vine creaminess…

20-30 years ago I was an avid follower of the writings of Clive Coates – who we lost in 2022 – he of the ‘old-vine creaminess.‘ The creamy sensation in the middle and finishing flavours which has nothing to do with oak barrels he attributed to old vines, a sensation that has been largely absent in recent years. In 2021 you will find it again.

The generosity of recent vintages is a little rarer in 2021 but you can still find it and, as is often the case, more so in the Côte de Nuits. The jumps from Bourgogne to villages to 1er to grand cru are as overt as with the white wines – this is a classic vintage to show the terroir differences. I liken the expression of terroir to an accordion player: In recent warm vintages, the differences in the appellation, though good, were somewhat compressed. in 2021 this accordion player has opened out his arms decompressing the intricacies – leaving more space between them…

Like the whites, this remains a very modern interpretation of the word ‘classic.’ We should never forget that almost all important wines were harvested with 12-13.5° of natural maturity – you would never have seen that 25-30 years ago – more like 10.5 to 11.5 – even in grand crus! I am taken aback by the proclamations of some vignerons: “Yes, in 2021 we only have around 13° so not the richness that we’ve come to expect.” – WTF!? How short memories are!” (Right: 2021 Clos Saint-Denis)

Some domaines resorted to a little sugar to prolong the fermentations as they thought the wines a little meagre. In fact, almost universally, the wines didn’t taste all that well for many months in elevage – practically everyone was disappointed with them – unlike the whites – until the summer months, after they had been racked, or even later after the 2022 harvest. All the producers noted this remarkable turnaround. In tastings, the level of acidity was important in the whites but not particularly in the reds. Yet the reds showed more structural austerity in the early phases of elevage – even, still, some of the Bourgognes and Villages in my September & October tastings – this was most pronounced in the Côte de Nuits but not so much from mid-November.

It’s of little surprise then, that the early tastings of the reds were far from positive and this, taken together with the difficulties of the growing season, constructed a negative narrative around the vintage reds. A narrative that this taster – nay drinker – is more than happy to rubbish! 2021 reds in the Côte d’Or are a bridge between 2019 and something more classic. The balance of the 21s ensures interesting wines even if you choose to wait 20 years to open your bottles. Unsurprisingly, it is a vintage of such low volume that it could be quickly lost from our collective consciousness(es) – in this respect, there are many parallels to that wonderful vintage in the Côte de Nuits – 1991.

Who to follow

Of course, I advise you to be guided by the individual notes in my reports – for those excellent and great wines worth searching out – but these were the domaines that just left me with a feeling of elation when I exited their tastings – wines of emotion:

Côte de Beaune
Albert Morot in Beaune
Chevalier Père et Fils in Ladoix
Joseph Voillot in Volnay

Côte de Nuits
Jean Grivot in Vosne-Romanée
Berthaut-Gerbet in Fixin
l’Arlot in Premeaux

And my Coup de Coeur in 2021, red and white (so far!) – it has to be Domaine Jean Grivot – a surprise for me but a happy one.

Just for the record, since I started noting these things, the single most outstanding tasting of my recent tasting seasons have been:
2018 Vintage – Domaine de la Romanée-Conti
2019 Vintage – Domaine William Fèvre
2020 Vintage – Château des Bachelards (but annoyingly it was their presentation of2019s!)
2021 Vintage – Domaine Jean Grivot

Buying…

And just one last word on buying: The prices are the prices and the availability, as you’ve seen from my statistics, is less than half what they normally have. It’s going to be challenging to source the wines – don’t get angry about the prices – just buy them if you are a) offered and b) the price suits, and if it doesn’t, drink some Barolo…

The yields

Figures courtesy the BIVB in hectolitres: 1 hectolitre (1 hl) = 100 litres

More so for the reds than the whites, 2017 is the high-water mark for red production in the Côte d’Or, not 2018. And – the regionals excepted as the frost was generally less severe here – you can easily see that 2021 brought half the volume of 2017 – and much less than that in the (Corton) grand crus…

What the growers said…

Encapsulating the vintage:

Jean-Nicholas Méo – Domaine Méo-Camuzet:
“I remember doing a stage here (at the domaine) in 1986 – it was awful, no triage and hardly 9.5° for some of the wines – people talk of 2021 as a very difficult vintage but today we live in very different times!”

Alessandro Noli – Domaine Clos de Tart:
“I love this vintage, and I defend it! It didn’t start with a great press maybe because of the discussions around the volume but I think it is magnificent – great balance but with finesse.”

Mathilde Grivot – Domaine Jean Grivot:
“We really didn’t want to push the extraction in this vintage – it really was a year to have the courage to do nothing in 2021.”

Frédéric Mugnier – Domaine Mugnier:
“In the cuverie the vintage was classic – we find a profile of wine like 20 years ago – in elevage a vintage that was meagre to start with but fine after the harvest – I think this a classic evolution.”

Mark Haisma – Domaine Mark Haisma:
“Previous years were about density, 21 is about acid-balance which is classic burgundy.”

Géraldine Godot – Domaine de l’Arlot:
“It’s the style of classic burgundies rather than some of the excesses of exuberance of recent vintages. They are just very classy. 2017 with a bit more construction. The 20s are almost tiring to taste today by comparison.”

David Duband – Domaine David Duband:
“The quality is a very different style – no global warming in these wines – yet, they are wines without faults, there’s no excess of tannin, or acidity, or pyrazine – they are lighter wines than we have become used to but I think the customers will love them”

Cyprien Arlaud – Domaine Arlaud:
“It’s a vintage that I’d never say was better than 2019 but I appreciate the style that’s fresher. I have a feeling of 2007 as the wines are immediate and have emotion.”

Jeremy Seysses – Domaine Dujac:
“Initially, I was pretty downcast – the impression was light in colour and light in tannin – not 77 or 84 ‘tough’ but for the challenges and marginal ripeness I saw 86 or 87 as comparable. I didn’t taste, hardly, partly because the reduction was prominent – we’d used a lot of sulfur – but after malos I was surprised and now see almost 2000+ in terms of quality. Purity is, if not the surprise, not a given in this type of vintage.”

Laurent Lignier – Domaine Hubert Lignier:
“A vintage with lower temperatures and less sun so more classic pinot noir for here – but I like the purity, acidity, and also elegance that is the result. 2018-20 are more generous and with some black fruit that you can appreciate early but these 21s have a more classic style, purity and acidity that older buyers will love – better after a few years of ageing.”

For comments from Côte de Beaune producers, please refer to that report here.