Burgundy, May 2008

Just back from 3 days of pretty intensive tasting in Burgundy where we did a comprehensive sweep of growers in the Cote de Nuits, Cote de Beaune, Cote Chalonaise and the Macon, tasting some spectacular wines along the way. I will go through the growers and my thoughts over the coming days, but I just want to give some initial overall impressions.

The 2006 vintage is really good for both reds and whites. Considering that it is somewhat in the shadow of the amazing 2005 vintage, the quality is very good indeed. The wines lack the intensity and concentration of 2005, but they have lovely clean, fresh fruit flavours and nice balance. They are not for the long haul, but will make for nice drinking in the medium term.

We tasted some 2007s from barrel as well (many hadn't yet finished their malolactic fermentation and thus weren't really tasteable) and the quality likewise seems good from the growers we visited who all expressed relief that the vintage wasn't a disaster as they feared in August last year after 2 months of rain! September stepped in to save the vintage and, after some severe sorting of the grapes - many were down 30% volume on normal - some good wines have been made. Again, these are for drinking and not for keeping, but that is, in itself, no harm.

Beaune was as pleasant as ever, except for the rather rainy conditions and as usual, we drank too much and ate too much and slept too little! More details will follow...