It’s true – I’ve bored you enough about a year that has experienced wave after wave of rain – but with some nice sunny days too. Unfortunately, for many producers, the balance has seemed to be more in favour of the rain this year, evidenced by even more thunder-storms in the Côte d’Or over the weekend – and so my message is unchanged.

If you haven’t been hailed, it’s predominantly been a year of fighting the mildew.

The best exposed and drained soils — unsurprisingly, mainly in the grand cru locations — have suffered less, but it’s not all roses here either. A simple walk around Montrachet will reveal beautiful bunches but also bunches with dried-out grapes (due to mildew) or grapes pitted by hail impacts — as good as the location is, it’s no protection from the hail.

I was in Beaujolais and the Mâconnais last Thursday and saw the first truck-loads of white grapes heading to wineries – but in this early case, the grapes were for crémant – these are always picked earlier, at closer to 11% potential alcohol than the 12-13% of the still wines. But I did also see a single team harvesting reds too. A few more were in the vines over the weekend – notably Lafarge-Vial.

I chatted with Richard Rottiers who can easily position the vintage at the top and the tail of greater Burgundy:

“2022 and 2023 were two good years for volume so I have managed to keep some stock here in Beaujolais – fortunately! – because 2024 is a year with lot of mildew – it was very hard to fight against the ‘fungals’ with this year’s rain. It all depends on where the storms went; I lost a lot due to hail in some parts of Moulin à Vent and none at all in other vineyards. I will start my harvesting on Monday (9th September) as I already have sectors with 13-14°. I think I will have half a harvest but I have some friends here who may not harvest at all…
“Likewise, the volume in Chablis was very good last year – fortunately – this year I think 5-10 hl/ha is realistic !!”

“5-10 hl/ha” – that would be pretty shocking – 10-20% of a normal harvest volume – and Richard (Domaine des Malandes) has about 5 hectares that are protected by hail nets…

Anecdotal, but the vines around Solutre looked nice last week – still some sub-optimal bunches – but easy to triage, indeed avoid cutting completely…

My own ‘home’ domaine in Beaune will be starting their harvest next Monday (16th September) – Dujac, maybe, on the 17th, though many more in the Côte de Nuits will be waiting almost another week. There are, of course, many outliners too in the Côte d’Or – Thibaut Clerget is starting in a couple of days and the team of de Montille was already picking some pinot grapes yesterday in Pezerolles and today in Taillepieds – but I’m assuming that they were picking some young vines – these are usually the most precocious.

But never forget that since the late 1990s burgundy became a wine of triage. It’s not how the bunches of grapes look at the start – it’s what you choose to throw away and therefore how best grapes will express themselves as wine. That’s the fun – though clearly we will have many fewer bottles to have fun with in this vintage !!

Here are a few images that date from mid-August up until last Thursday:

Montrachet 20 August

Montrachet 20 August

Richebourg 25 August

Pommard 1er 26 August

Pouilly-Fuissé 5 September

Not so Serene…

It’s the start of August so, as the domaines start to think of their pre-harvest holidays, it’s a worthy time to take stock of the vintage so far.

Complicated !!

Not surprisingly, due to the many complications, it’s going to be a later harvest, and potentially quite a prolonged harvest too.

A microcosm of the vintage is Chablis – to a greater or lesser extent, everywhere is like Chablis – it’s the peaks and troughs of Chablis’ weather patterns that have expressed themselves more in earnest, more brashly, though:

Parts of Chablis were affected by frost – they have seen a lot worse but the effect was there

Parts of Chablis were under water already for the second time in April – La Chapelle-de-Vaupelteigne

Parts of Chablis were hailed already for the 4th time in June – Chichée

Parts of Chablis were decimated by hail – Fourchaume & Fontenay

Most of Chablis has been fighting the mildew – the grapes and the leaves

Most of Chablis has been deluged by stormwater in the last 2 weeks

By a degree – plus or minus but mainly minus – it has been much the same in the rest of Burgundy and Beaujolais. In the last week, there have been heavy storms in the Côte d’Or too – heavy enough rain to start moving some of the topsoil down the hills (Meursault) or to have had some hail mixed in with the water (Saint Aubin).

Everywhere, the vine-treatments have been unending; unless you have been using contact sprays (ie not organic) with your treatments quickly washed away by the rain that punctuates all this year. On average versus the more recent dryer years – the number of treatments have been double.

Until mid-July, and ignoring the much stronger frost of that year, 2024 has reminded me of 2016; an early growing season with so much rain and not that much sunshine – that all changed when the sun came out in mid-July in 2016. This year the sun and warmer weather arrived just a few days later – but the extra warmth and sunlight were still punctuated with much more rainy weather than July/August of 2016.

We will have to wait many months before discussing the wines of 2024 but in terms of the conditions in the vineyards, and the apparent yields of grapes, at this stage we seem to have quite the hierarchical vintage, i.e. the better-placed vineyard sites (1ers and grand crus) seem to have decent yields and (probably due to better drainage) seem to have been much less affected by the mildew. The more ‘humid’ locations having little to no yields and prime mid-slope locations are looking beautiful.

This is going to make life complicated for the harvest !!

2-3 weeks ago, many domaines in the Côte d’Or were thinking about starting their harvest 15-16 September but those dates are already starting to come under a little pressure as domaines think to start 7-10 days earlier. The yields are a complicating factor; the smaller the yields, the faster the grapes will ripen. The higher the yield, the longer a domaine will wait for maturity.

So the harvest timings are currently in-line with 2019 – but with a lower crop this year – and also very close to the 2021 vintage timing.

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A post shared by Météo Express (@meteoexpress)

The weather, the weather – there’s not much else to talk about in 2024.

The year began mild, became cool and remains tempestuous. At best, the lower-lying vineyards are soggy but many, even at the end of May, are water-logged. The concern is growing about mildew…

The frost is, now, all but a fleeting memory; hardest hit was the Chatillonnais – but nobody mentions it as the region is known (almost) only as a source of grapes for crémant – here, the temperatures dropped to -5°C. Of course, if there is frost, Chablis always seems to be affected. In the Côte de Beaune, Maranges and some of Monthelie and the Hautes Côtes de Beaune suffered. Elsewhere, from the Mâconnais to Dijon, any damage was limited – it certainly couldn’t be described as a yield-limiting factor.

The rain continues to bear down on all the vineyards – making treatments to combat mildew barely possible. Some domaines are reporting – already before flowering – that they may lose a majority of their Bourgognes. Since 2007, the potential for mildew is currently similar to 2016 – which was saved by a great second half of the summer – and just a little behind the mildew levels reported in the 2012 and 2013 vintages.

And what of flowering? There are one or two outliners that I’ve seen images of, but it seems like next week (so just into June) will see the onset. This currently puts the potential harvest timing about average since 2007 – ie about 22-23 days earlier than the latest and, equally, later than the earliest.

Of course, this phase of tempestuous, turbulent, weather still brings a heightened risk of hail. Chablis, in addition to its frost damage, already lost significant yield in 1,000 hectares of vines to the 1st May hail – from a total of 6,000 hectares. Luckily (so far !!) both St.Bris and Irancy have avoided both frost and hail – my fingers remain crossed…

Two or three times a week the meteoexpress weather channel in the linked Instagram post, above, shows parts of France with heavy hail, an additional reminder – if any were needed – was the thunder and lightning in Chablis on Monday the 20th May afternoon – weather that seemed to follow me all the way back to Beaune via Dijon. At 8pm in Dijon, there were many leaves on the ground – or pieces of leaves! It was only when I consulted the meteoexpress feed in Instagram that I saw what happened in Dijon a couple of hours before I arrived – see the Instagram above. I understand that only the most extreme north of the Côte de Nuits vines were touched – not too viciously but it’s still too early to quantify the effect – in the sector of Marsanay’s Grasses Têtes.

Rainfall – so far the average this year is 380mm, which is around one-third more than the average of the 5 previous years.

A selection of May 2024 photos…

Yup !!

Still sodden Puligny…

Chablis Preuses

Chablis Moutonne

Chablis Fourchaume

Montrachet

A small reminder…

A new door (Portal !!)

Super…

Jogging view #1 Stormy Beaune…

A WW2 bomb !!

Jogging view #2 Beaune 1er Clos des Mousse

Jogging view #3 Grands-Echézeaux

Jogging view #4 – back home !

New window, old view…