A hot year – but, judging by this graphic, not so much in Burgundy.
It’s interesting reading, though I found more food for thought looking at the report for the (much) wetter and cooler 2024 vintage…
*Click to access this external site…
It’s started to get warm, but it’s only 10 days since the candles, windmills and burners were doing their thing in many parts of Burgundy.
The worst of the frost seemed to be, as usual, in Chablis. Temperatures as low as -6°C were seen near Chichée – and that’s not a place that’s afforded much protection; Their premiers are quite distant from sources of water (for aspersion) and the village wines can’t really support the cost of using candles. I know that the assessors from the insurance companies have been on site this week – with early estimated of 25-40% losses – in places. In other places, mainly the higher value vineyards, where candles and water sprays were used, the damage seems to be much, much smaller – but we will see – it’s how the flowering and grape development goes that counts…
In the Côte d’Or it has, so far, been another year of prophylactic vine protection measures. Yes, temperatures hovered around -3°C one night, but the weather was also dry and windy. The next day was also supposed to be minus 3°C, but turned out cloudy and closer to zero. Again, we will have to see how the flowering goes, but damage seems rarer than in Chablis – which was already ahead of the rest of Burgundy in growth.
The Hautes Côtes de Beaune had a few losses – particularly near Paris l’Hôpital in the south of the Côte d’Or, but the Côtes Chalonnais, Mâconnais and down into Beaujolais seemed to have avoided damage.
The next days are forecast to be cooler again after some days hovering around 25°C – but nothing close to frosty, indeed many domaines have already cleared away their candles…
Of course, it’s very early, but the current stage of growth is already indicative of a late August harvest !!
Although, to an extent, already deployed in Chablis, the last of the candles, ‘smudge-pots,’ trace-heating wires, heat-cannons and windmills were put in place in the Côte d’Or during Wednesday and Thursday.
For the last two nights, they have been put to use with temperatures well below zero Friday-Saturday, after the night before showed roughly 0°C. It seems tough in the Mâconnais too…
The frost of recent years has arrived around the 10th April – it’s 2 weeks earlier in 2026 – but with enough early growth that there will certainly be some yield-reducing damage.
For now, all we can do is watch and take stock – these are sleepless nights for the working vignerons…
I had to cancel a tasting I arranged in November with a redoubtable group of vignerons from the Mâconnais, because I needed a second operation on a finger that I broke last June. Note to self, keep your eyes on the ground, not the mountains, when running the trails 🙂
So this was when we could reschedule: A mix of (mainly) 2024s, some longer elevage 2023s – and even some 2022s and a 2021…
A mix of rain and sun, and dangerously close to 0°C in the mornings – one producer told me it was white in his vines on Monday morning. But the vines seem a little less forward here, compared to Chablis or the Côte d’Or, but still, reputedly, they are 15 days ahead of the average growth…
Wednesday, I could run in my ‘home mountains’ again – and, at least this day, I mainly kept my eyes on the ground in front of me 🙂
It was the Grand Jours de Bourgogne last week – so the town was very busy – I don’t think that there were many free hotel rooms as 2,700 people were registered….
Actually, since covid-time, I stopped going to very large tastings with (literally for the GJB) over 1,000 tasters in a room better suited to 2-300, and with so much spitting too 🙂
I anyway prefer to meet one-on-one in a quieter place – the producers’ actual domaine, for instance – and I’m already up to 223 domaines since the (roughly official) launch of my 2024 (vintage) tasting campaign on the 1st October. But the GJB does have a number of tastings outside of the official 2-3 regional tastings per day of the official program – here you can also find interesting things – so I found a couple of those to go to 😉
I also managed to tour around the vines – mainly in the Côte de Beaune last week. Much of the standing-water (in the flats of the vineyards) has receded, so it’s starting to look a little less like 2024, even though I was met with lots of rain on Wednesday !!
Thursday and Friday were sunny days, the views Spring-like, with the flowers blossoming between the vines – the almond blossom is already a memory. You can see that much of the pruning is done, and a large part of laying the bagettes (the main shoot) onto the metal wire is complete. The buds are starting to bulge at the end of the shoots, but I didn’t see any single leaves yet – which hasn’t stopped the caterpillars from starting to eat the buds!
I saw only one vineyard where candles have been deployed in the Côte d’Or – to counter frost – and that was in some villages Santenay, but I hear on the grapevine (literally!) that candles were lit over the weekend in Chablis – maybe some water-sprays too !!
This week, I was in the Mâconnais…
What a lovely week – first, I love the 2024s that I’m tasting and secondly – the weather!
Whilst it’s been chilly and close to 0°C in the mornings, every afternoon touched 20°C. Even my jogging has been well-served by shorts and a t-shirt.
Of course, we’ve had, what just about everyone will was agree, was a proper winter season. Though the pessimists will certainly say that it was too short…
The cool/cold weather ended abruptly about 10 days ago and the countryside is already blooming – the trees, even the magnolias, are close to full bloom. Of course, the pessimists (again) only point to the fact that their vines are about 15 days ahead of the average – about 2 months ahead of the St.Glace – about the same as they experienced in 2020 and also 2021 – but those vintages brought two very different results.
The candles are largely stockpiled and waiting for deployment – April 8-10 has been a common timing for frost in recent years, and that’s still a long way off !!
This week in Chablis:
I only made an early tour, when it was first opened, and only the ground floor. But it was kind of cool !!
Now I find the website. If you drink a lot of 1999 DRC, the price will be no problem…
Images culled from the linked site…
6am – and there’s neither fresh coffee, nor croissants in French service stations !!
Effectively, the harvest is over as in Morey St.Denis, even Domaine Ponsot finished their aligoté a couple of days ago !!
So today I’m closing this localised 2025 reporting with some of the longest-waited grapes to be picked in Beaujolais – my more in-depth thoughts on the harvesting period will come in my September report..
‘Heroic viticulture on the hillsides‘
That’s how the locals describe their cultivation of the steep vineyards, and only partly with tongue in cheek …
Here in Rivolet – southern Beaujolais, but still Beaujolais Villages – the loamy soil is kinder to cultivate than the sandy granite that characterises hillsides of Chiroubles and others like Le Perréon, but the gradient here is still not to be underestimated !!
These were the vines of Château de l’Éclair, sitting at 400m at the bottom of the parcel and going to 500m at the top: 0.8 ha of vines trained up and down the hill, another 0.8 that is terraced across the hill. Replanted from goblet-pruned vines in 1999. Our harvesting took place in 26°C, despite our altitude – the forecast suggests 11°C for next Tuesday…
Nice grapes, no rot, just a little dried grapes. The most consistent (still small) problem was some losses to wasps. Then followed a delicious lunch; the meat was cooked in the grape pressings with extra lees. I did a quick check, but failed to locate the tofu !!
This afternoon in Vosne-Romanée
A hot year – you could say quite a dry one – but, as you can see, not dry finishing for the later pickers.
The rain was quite strong in the Côte d’Or in the early morning of today. By 09h00 it had largely stopped. With rain forecast for today but then a forecast of nearly 10 days of dry weather, things were looking up for the later pickers.
But about 4pm the sky grew dark and the nearby villages were lost in the rainclouds. I missed the worst of the downpours – but not their aftermath – ie the rivers of fast-moving, brown-clay-coloured, water.
Above is the view with Vosne 1er Les Suchots in the foreground, with high-trained vines of Leroy’s Romanée St.Vivant in the background – your intrepid reporter chose to stay in the car !! Luckily, Vosne seems to have been largely picked !!
Gevrey-Chambertin today:
It’s really towards the north of the Côte d’Or where there is still work to do, hence, my trip to Gevrey.
I didn’t see the rain, recorded above, any further north than Chambolle-Musigny, as, at this hour, I was already heading south.
More generally, it’s a minority of the parcels, but plenty of grapes were still waiting in the vines, not much in the villages plots, more in premiers such as Corbeaux and Cazetiers. There were also grapes waiting in Mazis du Bas. As for grapes not waiting, there were teams picking in Bèze, Chapelle-Chambertin and Chambertin itself.
I had a small chat with Jean-Louis Trapet (some images from Domaine Trapet below). “We will finish harvesting tomorrow with some Pommard from higher-located vines and some Marsannay. I’m very happy with the maturity, and whilst we are just starting to see a little rot, it’s all triaged, of course.”
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