GOODOCTOR

Burgundy's 2007 Cote d'Or Whites: Hurry Up and Wait 

The 2007 vintage will go down in the record books in Burgundy just as in most of Northern Europe for its unprecedented early bud break and flowering and for an April that repeatedly reached typical high-summer temperatures. Thereafter, conditions declined and the actual summer was cool and repeatedly wet, giving back most but not all of the freakish head start the vines had had in May, and engendering challenging mildew and premature rot that necessitated frequent sprayings, which themselves in turn further retarded grape ripening. It was thus more from pressure of rot than from premature ripeness that some growers started to harvest at the end of August, because nature seemed to do everything possible to squander the vintage’s record-breaking head start. Conditions reached a low point in what Benoit Ente described as “a near catastrophic June, with rain 25 out of 30 days,” and grape flavors in late August still needed a boost. Only the arrival of dry weather and northerly breezes at the end of that month saved this harvest from being a disappointment, at which point most growers with Pinot Noir – more challenged by rot this year than Chardonnay – began by picking it. And the presence of pickers this early no doubt also influenced many a subsequent early start on picking whites. The crop set had been copious, and given the freakish head start of the Spring it is no wonder so many growers had seen little reason to crop-thin early, a decision that looked problematical from the perspective of mid summer and beyond. Harvesting too early meant vegetal flavors; harvesting later meant having to carefully monitor the sanitary state of one’s grapes. "While there was some warmth in September," comments Arnaud Ente, "it was insufficient to degrade the acidity," which he viewed as a virtue. That said, in some instances growers reported a surprisingly rapid ascent of pH levels after a certain point. Bonneau du Martray's Jean-Charles Le Bault de la Morinière took a sanguine view of the overall situation. "The only difficulties this year from the standpoint of the vine," he opined, "came with the stress of April and May. The only thing we had to be careful about after that was ripeness and timing" though he readily acknowledged that paying ones crew to sit idle for more than a week, as he did, was an expense bound to put "put pressure" on any grower. A lot of vines and growers clearly shared or exemplified de la Morinière's outlook, because make no mistake: the top Côte d’Or growers brought in a 2007 Chardonnay crop of excellent quality, with wines generally immediately accessible and of distinctive personalities, the best of them profound. American ex-pat and Beaune négociant Alex Gambal offered some statistics for his Saint-Aubin Les Murgers des Dents de Chien vineyard illustrative of the vintage ripening curve. Admittedly, this is a high-altitude and especially breezy site that Gambal harvested last. And of course, potential alcohol is only part of the ripening story, but to hear many growers – including Gambal – tell it, the evolution of acids and phenols was even more protracted. On August 20, potential alcohol in Gambal's Saint-Aubin cru was 9.1%. On August 27 – by which time the Pinot harvest was in full swing for most of those Côte de Beaune growers whose main crop is Chardonnay – the potential was only 10%. From there, it rose steadily to 11.4% on September 10 and 12% on September 17 when the fruit was picked. There was a lot of pressure from supplier-growers as well as oenologists to pick Chardonnay in late August, Gambal reports, despite a good weather forecast. He declared a ten day moratorium, "but if we hadn't pushed" the issue with suppliers, he insists, "we would have had an acidic, screaming mess." There are certainly some wonderful 2007s picked early, but that was only possible in favorable locations and with rigorous yield control and exceptional viticulture. For the most part, this relatively copious crop – for all of its head start – required patience.  The long, cool ripening served for a combination of often invigorating tartness and freshness of fruit even when total finished levels of acidity were not strikingly high on paper. But generally high levels of malic acid in their grapes ultimately meant that elements of creaminess were reinforced by the correspondingly prominent levels of lactic acid in the finished wines after conversion. There are remarkably many collections in which – even allowing for chaptalization – no wines exceeded 13% alcohol, a circumstance that can be conducive to the vintage fortes of clarity and refreshment, but can also reinforce any tendencies toward too lean or tart a vinous personality. A significant share of top growers was concerned to give their 2007s a leisurely élevage: even if the young wines were removed from barrel within a year, growers with the space to do so frequently gave them extended time on their fine lees assembled in tank. This approach corresponds not just to the perceived needs of the vintage, but to an increasingly widespread concern lest young white Burgundies be excessively exposed to barrel, and a belief that levels of sulfur and other signs of stability need longer monitoring before bottling to help guard against premature oxidation. The 2007s were generally judged to have been slow to reveal their fruit and charm, a seemingly trans-regional vintage characteristic that also applies in the Loire, Alsace, and Germany. As in the vineyards, so in the cellar, too, this was “a year for patience,” I heard time and again, even if that does not apply to drinking them now that the majority are beckoning from the glass. And in those instances where wines do show a touch of austerity or are un-knit, I’m inclined (allowing of course for house style) to attribute that to a stage that they will soon – as have the majority of their stable mates – outgrow. “The characteristics of 2007 are lots of tension, purity, and precision,” says Sauzet’s Gérard Boudot, aptly summarizing the strengths of the best wines of this vintage. The sole vintage to which growers with any frequency compare 2007 is 2004, and the resemblance is sometimes striking when tasted back-to-back. But their consensus – in which I concur – is that the 2007s are not only more generous but reflect healthier and more homogeneously ripe fruit. Even among Burgundy’s top growers, those noted for candor admitted to relatively high yields, but their wines are seldom lacking in either flavor concentration, or a subjective impression of palpable extract or mineral density, either. Furthermore, the differences from one site to another within a given collection tend to be impressively delineated. You’ll hear many local observers and Burgundy growers call this a “classic vintage,” with particular reference to “minerality,” to the reflection of differences between sites, and to the wines’ refreshing acidities. (One might also add, in their alcohol levels reminiscent of an earlier time.) But while the euphemistic employment of “classic” for overly-lean or under-ripe vintages could often be ridiculed in times gone by, that would be unfair criticism when applied to 2007.  Vincent Girardin was one of several growers to caution that the 2007s are still fundamentally not as concentrated as the 2004s, and that this might limit their evolutionary potential. I daresay, though, that consumers' well-founded concerns over the aging potential of white Burgundies in general trump the finer points of vintage distinction. If one wants to fault use of “classic,” for 2007 it could only be in comparison with standards of age-ability for top Côte d’Or whites that seem to have deserted all but a few addresses over the past 12-15 years. Indeed, the time is past when one might have been tempted to strongly emphasize the likelihood that these 2007s will mature relatively quickly. Not only does the irresistible generosity most of the best exhibit render this moot, the continual shadow of pre-mature oxidation also hangs over them and their entire genre. As I have noted in past reports and in on-line discussions at eRobertParker.com, it is no disrespect to describe the efforts of most of this region’s quality conscious growers to come to terms with this problem as “scatter-shot,” since diverse changes are being made in élevage and bottling practices in hope that some of the measures taken – or some synergistic combination of measures – will significantly reduce the incidence of pre-mature oxidation. It’s not that the choice of purported remedial methods is strictly intuitive: There are theories or at least coherent hypotheses behind many of them. But these hypotheses are often mutually exclusive.  I keep my projections of age-ability very conservative if compared with the sort of expectations I brought to the best white Burgundies I was tasting 15 or more years ago, but there is no question both that an “other things being equal” clause must be implicitly understood to adhere to any such assessment, and that nobody knows exactly what “other things” those are. Prices ex-cellar for the 2007s were generally unchanged or slightly lower than for 2006s. But eventual U.S. prices have fluctuated widely with the dollar’s value (and hence on when the wines were purchased); the degree of difficulty any given merchant has had in selling them; and reactions to the effects of general economic recession. (I have tried to reflect conditions in the marketplace as well as so-called “suggested retails” in the prices I quote with this report, but limits of my survey and the aforementioned wide fluctuations demand that these quotes be taken as only very approximate.) Many growers intimated that they would probably have significant stocks of unsold 2007 wine still at their estates this winter. For those with cash and patience, it should continue to be a buyers’ market for 2007s, and given the quality of the best of them, lovers of white Burgundy who can afford to play in the premier and grand cru price leagues should not miss the opportunities that this vintage affords.  The wines reviewed below were largely tasted in the course of my June, 2009 visits to nearly four dozen Côte d’Or estates and négociants, a few having been tasted earlier at the estates or subsequently stateside. Notes on the 2007 vintage of Chablis comprise a separate report in this issue. Recent vintages in the Mâcon will be the subject of a subsequent report, although I have included at this time reviews of some Mâconnaise wines bottled by Côte d’Or-based producers. Unless I thought it of particular explanatory value to do otherwise, I have listed the wines in the print edition in the order in which I was presented them at the estate. Following standard Wine Advocate conventions, any wines tasted only prior to bottling are given a parenthetic point spread rather than a specific score. Note that from among the alternate spellings that exist for the names of many Burgundy vineyards, I have for the most part adhered to those that appear on the label of each grower. In some cases of deviant spelling, however, that approach can handicap attempts to search for notes on-line under the name of a vineyard. 

—David Schildknecht 

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