WHAT MADE THE VINTAGE | THE WEATHER  

The headline figures stating that 2023 was Burgundy’s warmest year on record do not paint the full picture. The ingredients to the success of the vintage are a little more complicated. 

It is important to note that the 2022/23 winter was both mild and dry. Night time temperatures were also warm, and one of the main reasons for the rise in the annual temperature chart. Whilst 2023 may be the warmest year to date overall, this was down to higher average temperatures throughout the year, not an aggressively hot summer.

Spring rains provided vital water reserves for the year, and all but the most advanced sites escaped the vagaries of spring frosts this year. Excellent conditions at the beginning of June led to turbo-charged flowering. This resulted in highly successful fruit set with the potential for a strong crop at harvest time.  The summer was warm, but as Benoît Droin commented, less direct sunlight than in some years reduced the impact of the heat on the character of the wines. “They don’t feel hot!” he said.  

It was apparent in July that 2023 would potentially yield a large crop. Many growers took the opportunity to do an early green harvest, dropping the bunches they felt might not reach optimum ripeness at harvest time. Some growers even repeated the process in August, cutting some pink bunches and allowing the vine to focus all its energy on ripening a smaller number of bunches to achieve optimal ripeness.  

Larger crops and more bunches inevitably mean more time is required to reach full phenolic and fruit ripeness. 2023 was blessed with a superb heat spike at the end of August and two weeks of September. This was the key to the vintage’s success. It not only focused all the vines’ attention on achieving perfect maturity, but also allowed the fruit to be gathered in almost Californian conditions! 

WHAT MADE THE VINTAGE |
THE HUMAN TOUCH  

The greatest wine producers will always say that it is the weather that makes a year. They are just custodians, aiding and abetting nature. In truth it is a little more complicated than that. Whilst 2023 wouldn’t be called what one old vigneron called “an armchair vintage”, many did describe it as an easy year. Yes, there were fewer challenges, but only if you got your decision-making right at every stage. One false move and things could get tricky. 

Many lessons on the importance of pruning and its timing have been learnt in the recent frost-affected years. Pruning is a highly skilled job, setting the vine up for the year: the timing of the budding, the placement of future bunches, and thereby ripening and also the number of bunches per vine itself are determined by it. It is not a job for hired in help. Whilst ideally pruning would take place in early spring, the larger the vineyard area to cover, the earlier they must start, as soon as December or January. In 2023 thankfully, frost was not the issue, but excessive yield was a cause for concern. Even the most vigilant were surprised at the number of bunches per vine. 

The pros and cons of green harvesting (discarding of bunches in the early summer, to focus the vines attention on fewer bunches) is a never ending debate. Traditionalists would say that if you prune correctly, you don’t need to. However, in 2023 it was a necessity for almost everyone, in some cases not just one green harvest in July, but a second in August! It was clear from flowering time onwards that 2023 would be a large crop. Attentive vineyard practices were imperative: drop some fruit to focus energy and sunshine on fewer bunches and achieve optimal ripeness.  

The greatest challenges of the 2023 harvest were managing the quantities of fruit and also heat, which arrived at the end of the summer. An 8 day heatwave at the end of August and beginning of September played a crucial part in the final quality of the vintage, enabling the fruit to achieve maximum ripeness. However, it did provide some additional challenges.

It is imperative that the bunches arrive at a stable temperature, the cooler the better. Night time picking is easy if the land is flat and uniform and you can use a machine harvester. It is not quite so simple if you are combing the steep, rugged slopes of the Côte d’Or by hand; a careless snip can cause damage to both a vine and the picker themselves!  

In 2023 most growers wanted to pick in the cooler morning temperatures. Temperatures rose to almost 38°C on some days, which not only increased berry temperature, but also exhausted the pickers. Some larger estates, such as Louis Jadot, employed two teams of pickers, so that as the first team finished, a second one took over, to ensure that they covered all their land. Regardless, you still need the space to receive and process the fruit as it arrives. 

Large crops are always preferable, but they present their own problems, as only so much fruit can be processed in a day, especially at smaller, family domaines. In 2023, the fruit arrived dry, healthy and clean, and there was a lot of it. Many winemakers took the decision to chill down the later picked, warmer baskets of grapes overnight. This allowed maceration and vinification to take place at an even temperature, ensuring control and uniformity.