2014 Burgundy Vintage

Winter barely showed up. It was temperate, with above-average rain in January and February and only occasional short frosts, as cold as -5C, in what amounted to an extension of a cool, wet autumn. March and April were then dry and warm, and the vines woke early: budbreak came 10 days ahead of the 20-year norm, and development ran about two weeks ahead. Chablis saw spring night lows of -2 to -4C, but the ground was so dry that, save for a few scorched leaves, the vines came through. Flowering was quick. The first flowers in Meursault appeared on 21 May, with flowering virtually over two weeks later, and high temperatures dried out and dropped some berries and left some millerandage. Conditions stayed very dry until late in the afternoon of Saturday June 28, when a hailstorm struck the Cote d'Or and brought the first real rain of the season. From the end of June the summer turned cool and damp, and veraison stretched over several weeks. The weather ran in a cycle of one day rain, two days sun, but it was windy for almost the whole of July and August, and the wind dried the rain, kept the vines clear of rot and helped dry out the hailed grapes. By June the vines had slowed enough that an early September harvest, not August, looked likely, and the cooler weather slowed them a little further, so harvest now looked more likely to fall in mid-September. Only on 4 and 5 September did temperatures climb steadily into the late 20s C. September brought back the sun and the north wind, and Frederic Drouhin of Maison Joseph Drouhin said in a winery report: "Light, warm northerly winds, warm days, cool nights; all the favorable conditions needed to bring the grapes to the desired level of maturity." Picking began in the week of 8 September in the Maconnais and Cote Chalonnaise, on September 12 in the Cote d'Or and on September 13 in Chablis. The harvest totalled 1.58 million hectolitres, with hail leaving disparities between sectors.

The storm was forecast, and for the first time the new anti-hail burners were lit. They were positioned for storms from the west and south-west, but this one came from the south and south-east and largely bypassed them. Most of the Cote d'Or and the Cote Chalonnaise was hit, even the Cote de Nuits, but the epicentre was again Meursault to Beaune. Vines in the strike zone lost 20 to 95% of their grapes and much of their leaf canopy. For the third year in a row Volnay and Pommard were laid waste, along with southern Beaune, while Savigny was largely spared. The storm arrived a couple of hours before that evening's Elegance de Volnay dinner, and Volnay and Pommard had suffered hail three years in a row once before, in 1901, 1902 and 1903. Hail also hit parcels around Lugny in the Maconnais. The toll showed at harvest: much of Meursault yielded only about 65% of a normal crop, and Nicolas Rossignol's 2014 yields included 8 hl/ha in Pommard Noizons and in Beaune Clos des Mouches, and 25 hl/ha in Volnay 1er cru Santenots.

• Epicentre: Meursault to Beaune, with Volnay and Pommard hit for the third consecutive year
• Also hit: the Cote Chalonnaise and parts of the Cote de Nuits; Savigny largely spared
• Chablis seemed the one area completely spared
• Nicolas Rossignol's 2014 yields included 8 hl/ha in Pommard Noizons and 25 hl/ha in Volnay 1er cru Santenots

Harvest conditions were virtually perfect and mainly sunny, broken by heavy rain and thunder on the evening of the 18th and a storm over Santenay the next lunchtime that stopped the pickers for the day. By the 23rd mainly the Cote de Nuits Pinots and a few later Chablis parcels were left, picked in sunny but much cooler weather. The new worry was fruit flies, including Drosophila suzukii, whose bites and egg-laying caused acetic rot. Some vineyards were markedly affected and others not at all, and grapes from the worst hit, more often in the Cote de Nuits, often got no cold soak, higher SO2 and inoculated yeasts. Wine Spectator reported no rot and moderate sorting, mostly where hail had damaged grapes, and Aubert de Villaine of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti said: "Very rarely have we seen such healthy leaves and such a balanced growth of the vines. Diseases were nearly absent and the treatments were kept to a minimum."

• Acetic rot from fruit flies meant careful sorting of rotten and half-dried grapes
• A little oidium in summer and virtually none visible at harvest
• Chardonnay came in with good thick skins; Pinot north of Beaune had bigger berries than average but thick skins
• Burgundy-Report's author had never seen so many harvest machines in Burgundy, including in Meursault and Pommard

The BIVB calls 2014 a very good vintage of nicely balanced wines with intense colour, with particularly aromatic whites (white fruit, dried fruit and citrus, and a fresh, precise, mineral palate) and classic reds (undergrowth and sweet spice on the nose, silky, supple tannins), singling out Chablis Premier Cru and Grand Cru as harmonious, dense and aromatic with remarkable ageing potential and the Cote de Nuits as perfectly homogeneous in quality. Wine Spectator reported excellent, balanced whites and very good reds, and Etienne Grivot of Domaine Jean Grivot compared his young reds to 1989. A number of growers told Burgundy-Report this could be the greatest white vintage they had seen, which its author called perhaps a little premature.

• Whites: aromatic, fresh and mineral, with remarkable ageing potential in Chablis Premier and Grand Cru
• Reds: classic and supple with silky tannins; Cote de Nuits quality perfectly homogeneous, and Maconnais wines charming, ample and generous
• Chardonnay was the promising grape, according to Wine Spectator