Vintage Preview Burgundy 2017

A mixed bag is the simplest way to describe this vintage: a bumper crop of early-drinking reds and whites with patches of excellence but also plenty of pitfalls awaiting buyers. Tim Atkin MW gives his expert analysis and selects 102 top wines.

- Tim Atkin MW

Burgundy witnessed in 2017 something that it hadn’t seen for eight years: a large crop of mostly good-quality wines, red and white. With the significant exception of Chablis and a few isolated spots in Morey-st-denis, st-Aubin and rully, the growing season was free of vine diseases and adverse weather events. Volumes are large – this is Burgundy’s biggest-ever red wine harvest – which means most growers and négociants finally have some wine to sell. The year began with a cold winter (more and more unusual in the region) with three weeks of sub-zero temperatures in January. Spring, however, was mild and dry, leading to early bud burst and flowering, 20 days ahead of 2015. The freezing temperatures that did such damage in Chablis also descended on the rest of Burgundy in late April, but a combination of luck, dry soils and the collaborative effort of producers who lit bales of damp straw to create a protective smoke screen helped to avert disaster.

After that, the year began to hot up, with rapid growth in the vineyards – it got to 39°C in Vosne-Romanée on 21 June, marking the first of two heat spikes (the other came at the end of August). There was some rain in mid-July, late August and early September, but this was still a hot vintage where some vines suffered water stress.

It was also a very early vintage for many. Arnaud Ente in Meursault led the way on 23 August, with many top white wine producers picking before the end of the month. The red wine harvest started in the first week of September and continued until the end of the month in the Hautes Côtes. This was a vintage when acidity levels were low at the end of the summer and fell rapidly thereafter. In September, potential alcohol levels increased at more than twice the normal rate.