Well, that would be yes and no.

French meteorologists recently, through the BIVB, made presentations to the local wine producers. They showed some interesting data-sets that both confirmed and disproved some of what people were thinking re changing weather patterns. I offer a very quick summary of what was presented – second-hand – from someone who was at the presentation:

In recent years, the seasons have certainly shown some changes in terms of the average temperatures – currently, only Autumn is about the same average temperature as before – all the other seasons have clearly shown a shift to warmer average temperatures.

We have short memories when it comes to hail, communication is now instant, but before, we only heard of hail in wine magazines weeks after the fact. Whist taking France as a whole, it is clear that there have been exceptional hail events in 2016, but statistically there is no significant change in the incidence of such hail – Volnay for instance has previously been hit 3 years in a row. I think we need to keep a watching brief on that one!

I’m certainly not the only one that has the impression of more rain storms or a change in their frequencies, but the weather forecasters have gone back and checked their historic data for the amounts of rain; first per month, then per week and then per day et-cetera, and within statistical error – a surprise to everyone – it’s unchained.

Now who would have thought it!

Well, it’s decided!

Speaking as a Brit who has lived outside the UK for over 16 years now, who gets by in German at home, and ‘almost’ gets by in French in my second (third?) home, it would come as no surprise that, on balance, I was more of a ‘remain’ than a ‘Brexit’ – but it’s more complicated than that…

France seems an out-liner for the (old!) future of the EU, mired in Bureaucracy; most official ‘things’ having to be signed in triplicate in the home of the ‘C’est la France – c’est compliqué!’ I didn’t like that, nor did I like the massive un-elected facet of much of the apparent workings of the EU – but they were counter-balanced by an inclusiveness that I liked very much. It is strange that the people fighting against that are not just (some) politicians, but also the terrorists that would have us separated/segregated and hiding behind our front doors.

The campaign left a very bad taste though; dirty, pseudo racist messages from an Arthur Daley lookalike – but significantly less trustworthy. What to think of an apathetic Labour ‘leadership’ – in the end it was their lack of dynamism towards their own constituency that decided the vote. How in the future to trust the people who delivered such a cynical and downright lying (miss-leading is too small a word – however it looks when written) campaign. There were always going to be short-term and potentially long-term consequences. And what of those poor ‘non-English’ regions that voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU?

I always felt there was a chance that ‘things’ could be better for the UK in 5-10 years, post-Brexit, maybe also for the EU, if they are sufficiently shocked from their fat complacency – but the two have to retain strong ties – isolation can cause withering and death. But now is the time for everyone to do what is best for all those that took the time to vote, whichever way they voted…

Okay, that’s enough politics for this year – enjoy your weekend wherever you may be…!

Copyright Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Atkin, Pierre Vincent? I’ve no idea either 😉

As a numerical shorthand, scoring wines has some place when faced with a large list of potentials for your glass. I have never been an advocate of the seemingly self-important, faux-accurate scoring implied by the 100 points system but I accede to this utility.

I do sometimes score – but my 0-2 points system, plus the ‘3 for your favourite’ – a system I use in my blind reports when there are multiple tasters, but that’s something everybody can understand: 0=don’t like, 1=like, 2=would buy, plus your overall favourite =3. But 99 points?

Call me an inadequate taster, but without some initial calibration, the first wine could just as easily for me be 90 points or 91 – well actually not – the problem is that the goal-posts move almost annually. A great wine is always a great wine – those high-lighted by Tim (in Pierre’s ‘happy-post’) are indeed great wines – BUT – 2013 is a very good vintage, but it’s not an outstanding vintage. Those wines in an outstanding vintage should be more than 1 point better, but unfortunately he’s already run out of room…

Are these 99 point wines almost on a par with the greatest ever made? – by definition wines of 100 point perfection – of-course they are not, even if they are very fine indeed, hence, the scores are false! It’s hardly Tim’s fault; with obvious hard work he has slowly transformed from an ‘opinionated’ to ‘a knowledgable’ to (more importantly) an ‘insightful’ writer about burgundy’s wines, but he’s opted to be part of a system of appreciating scores – ‘score-creep’ that’s mandated by only the highest scores being useful for sales or the self-promotion of domaines, i.e. only those who gave the highest scores later seeing their names propagated. From what I’ve seen, this is now endemic for ‘southern-hemisphere’ critics but it is now very obvious in ‘old-world’ critique too. Just compare Burghound’s scores for the 1999 vintage with the same for 2004 (the latter being the least successful vintage since 1994) – his average score in 2004 was higher! Burghound started, to my reading of the situation, perfectly scoring versus the template of what good, very-good, excellent wines should be – let’s say 85, 88 and 90. The trouble for him was that other reviewers went higher. I believe that Burghound was quickly forced to go higher – just my 2 cents of opinion – but it’s symptomatic of the problem as I choose to see it.

I see it often but it’s worth underlining – there are no regional ‘bourgognes’ worth 95 points – actually (in theory!) it is an exceptional grand cru that reaches this zenith – perhaps a dozen young wines in a great vintage might merit 96+ but even the very best – let’s say only for the sake of argument, Romanée-Conti – reaches perfection, and then only in the rarest of vintages and with considerable bottle age. I’m prepared to believe that a few of the (real) 602 bottles of 1945 RC could have be so-described. But 99 points for a wine that’s not yet bottled? I think we all know the answer to that one…

For the record, I also highlighted Pierre’s Bonnes-Mares as a ‘do not miss’ wine in my report, but on that day, it was much more dynamic that the Musigny…

Just for the record, let us try to remember what the 100 point scoring was once supposed to reflect:

The caveat here, is that I’m talking about some ‘generalist’ wine-writers who occasionally dip their toe into a region, tasting at a few well-manicured addresses, probably sponsored by some ‘body’ or other, and back that up by tasting a bunch of grand crus that start at €100 a bottle. I’ve not been involved in a similar roughing of Twitter feathers before, but these two troll-esque tweets (from writers with over 40k of twitter followers) annoyed me just as much as previous Decanter (harvest) stories that seemed, at the same time, sensationalist yet lacking any real depth of comment or apparent knowledge:
Well, that’s my perjorative, clearly biased opinion based on what I read, anyway 😉

Packing for Burgundy. Can't help but feel this a #wine region whose prices are now so high they are beyond the reach of all but a very few.

— Will Lyons (@Will_Lyons) October 19, 2014

@Will_Lyons@billnanson@nealmartin@jymbudd most don't. Sad truth, affordable Burgundy is mostly boring. Wish it wasn't, terroir is real

— Jamie Goode (@jamiegoode) October 19, 2014

I assumed the first was tongue in cheek – and I like to have a laugh – but prodding showed that this was indeed Will’s thinking despite initially teasing-out that he was talking about ‘only the very best!’ His views seemed to harden and widen in the ‘conversation’ that followed. Hopefully he goes out and visits in more depth than I fear will be the case. As for Jamie – sorry, but that comment does not come up to his usual standards. There is much more to this if you wish to follow the conversations in the links above. Unfortunately, Twitter becomes unwieldy and close to useless once more than a couple of people are ‘involved’ in a conversation…

I pondered writing this, mainly because it seemed too self-serving, but the fact is, you need specialists if you want to know what to buy. Jancis’s site is going that way with multiple contributors, but already you have Roy Hersh for Port, Chris Kissack for Bordeaux and Loire, Burghound, maybe Neal Martin, maybe me for Burgundy – but for god’s sake, don’t read magazine/newspaper style columns hoping get useful info. World of Fine Wine is an exception, but has such lead-times you could never describe it as a guide for buying.

My basic premise is: Yes indeed Burgundy has become expensive for a certain niche producer list, put another way ‘no shit Sherlock.’ But a journalist can’t just say ‘I’m telling it like it is’ without actually showing some groundwork on which their opinions are formed. Actually, I’d be much more amenable if they simply said ‘In my opinion, Burgundy has a vanishing level of relevance because of xxxx, yyyy and zzzz‘ substantiating their words…

But we all know the phrase about ‘opinions’ – mine too! 😉