Burgundy lovers who enjoy delicacy will revel in 2024’s fresh character compared to the more opulent vintages in their cellars. The vintage has produced bright and fresh wines with classical, pre-global-warming Burgundian aromas and flavours. They have impressive aromatic purity and transparently reveal vineyard character.
After a number of very hot, sunny years, the 2024 growing season was wet and cloudy, though not cold. Greater knowhow, and better and stricter sorting, has helped to produce attractive wines which would not have been possible 15-20 years ago under such conditions. The crop was very small, between a third and half of a normal year, allowing the grapes to attain satisfactory ripeness. Our strict selection of highly competent growers always do proportionately better than the lesser ones in more difficult years.
With pure aromas, light to medium body, just-ripe flavours and low to medium alcohol levels, the 2024s offer the scale of a string quartet rather than a symphony orchestra.
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Chablis
Côte Chalonnaise & Côte d’Or
Online only wines
White wines
The whites are exciting, classically framed and of very good quality. The crystalline purity has produced precise, linear Chablis. In the Côte de Beaune, they show bright citrus and apple flavours and a firm, fresh palates with a certain density and length of flavour. The Mâconnais is highly successful. They will develop well in bottle.
Red wines
The 2024 reds have a pretty, weightless quality, an ethereal character that few other grape varieties could achieve so successfully in such a vintage. Quality is good and occasionally very good. They vary a little more in style than the whites. Colours are perhaps deeper than expected, and tannins are sweet, both due to the considerable quantity of ‘hens and chickens’ (millerandage, where grapes grow to a variety of sizes, with many remaining small and rarely achieving normal dimensions), which aids quality. There were 100 days between flowering and harvest, which growers traditionally find allows phenolic maturity (flavour and tannin) to be achieved. They are delicate and light on their feet. The aromas are pure pinot noir: fine and perfumed, and mostly in the red-fruit spectrum. On the palate they offer lively fruit and a gentle, soft structure accompanied by sweet tannins. They will be generally enjoyable in the early and mid-term but the longevity of the very best may confound expectations. Pommard is continuing to perform well in both warm and cool years, and I have added a new producer, Launay Horiot.
The balance and character of the wines
Most grapes were harvested at satisfactory levels of ripeness of 11.5-12.5% alcohol and chaptalised by half a degree or so. Saved by a tiny crop, the small yield and normal temperatures allowed the grapes to achieve a satisfactory level of ripeness, despite the wet and cloudy conditions. Some are richer. One of the best growers, Comte Armand, made 10hl/ha (normally 35hl/ha) from the Clos des Epeneaux vineyard and the grapes reached 13.4% potential alcohol at harvest. The wines are well balanced. Although acidity is a little below the average, one perceives the wines as attractively fresh as alcohol levels are low. In the reds, the tannins are soft.
There is no obvious comparison with a previous vintage. As in all years of moderate ripeness and high rainfall, when one ascends the quality hierarchy from Bourgognes, villages, premiers crus to grands crus, quality improves significantly in the best-drained sites in the middle and top of the slope. The deep roots of older vines absorbed less water than the younger shallower rooted ones. It’s worth trading up.
Weather
The best growers rose to the challenge and made good wines. There was twice the amount of rain compared to a normal year. There was 16% less sun in Chablis, 9% less in the Côte d’Or and 5% less in the Mâconnais. However, it was not cold. Indeed, the average annual temperature in 2024 was about 12.4°C (long term average is about 11.8°C) allowing ripening to progress.
Ripened by low yields
The vintage ripened because of small yields brought about by hail, poor flowering and mildew. For those practising conventional viticulture, crops were around a third to half in Chablis, half in the Côte de Beaune, a third for pinot in the Côte de Nuits and just below normal in the Mâconnais. Three factors diminished the size of the harvest. Firstly, in Chablis hail on 1st May affected 1,000ha and some frosts reduced yields. Secondly, poor flowering hit pinot noir severely, which flowered later than chardonnay in less good conditions. This led to significant shatter (coulure), where grapes do not form or drop off, and hens and chickens (millerandage). These affect quantity, but not quality. Indeed, hens and chickens improves quality as there is a greater skin-to-pulp ratio and flavour, tannins and colour reside in the skin. Also, they have fewer pips, whose tannins can be bitter if crushed, so tannin quality is improved. This may have been the most significant factor in crop loss. Thirdly, there was a large and persistent problem of mildew, which for certain growers seems to have attacked more the bunches than the leaves. It was most prevalent in the wetter, lower-lying vineyards. Mildew results in leaf loss and berries which dry out and fall off. Again, this is disastrous for quantity but does not taint the grapes. It was tricky for organic and biodynamic producers to control the mildew. They often made half the crop of those practising conventional methods.
Good weather at harvest and winemaking decisions
Most people harvested during the good, dry weather between 12th and 22nd September. Temperatures were around or just below normal. After a severe sorting, the grapes that went into the vats were of healthy and of good quality. For pinot, opinions were divided whether to do more or less destemming and generally there was just a gentle extraction, more pumping over than punching down. Everyone was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the wines and their development in barrel, which was much better than expected.
