10 minute read
david williams
Why bet the farm on the vagaries of vintage?
As he considers the inflated prices of 2020 Burgundy, anticipating the shortfall created by the 2021 vintage, David Williams wonders if more wine producers might consider blending not only between regions, but harvests too
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As I write this, the UK wine trade is in the middle of its annual celebration of the most influential wine region in the world. With numerous omicron-inspired cancellations, Burgundy 2020 en primeur season may not have been quite up to full strength in terms of physical tastings. But what might be called the Burgundian worldview has never been more powerfully dominant.
Burgundy, after all, is the home of the singular, the place that has done most to promote the idea that quality – or at the very least interest – in wine comes in the smallest possible discrete units of space and time. It’s there that you find the most vivid example of the Google Earth-zoom view of vineyard hierarchy, the idea that, as you zero in on Europe-France-Bourgogne-Côte de Nuits-Vosne-Romanée-La Tâche, each step represents an exponential rise in quality and price.
Burgundy is also, of course, one of the homes of the single-varietal wine, the idea being that those infinitesimal changes in terroir are best displayed in wines made from one variety, whether that’s Chardonnay or Pinot Noir.
Most of the coverage I’ve read about 2020 Burgundy, as well as the few wines I’ve managed to taste myself, suggest that it’s a vintage in which Burgundy’s singular virtues were fully on display. Despite the hot, dry growing conditions, it was a year of fresh wines with high acidity, with whites being particularly, consistently good, but plenty to charm in the reds, too. Yet it was also a year in which the best sites stood out, when the grands crus really were that crucial bit more interesting, more vibrant, more focused than their village peers.
Curiously, however, while 2020 may be a classic Burgundy vintage, the en primeur campaign also prompted questions about the value of the last element of Burgundy’s singular vision: the single vintage.
As is clear from the early offers, the price of Burgundy 2020, and not just for the tiny production top wines of the region’s star producers and crus, is going to be high, even in the context of a region that has become a magnet for the world’s super rich.
The reason is simple enough: the frostbitten, hail-battered, yield-shredding struggle that was 2021. With so many producers, at all levels, having a muchreduced (in some cases, disastrously so) crop, it’s clear that most have taken the decision to recoup the anticipated loss of funds from 2021 by adding a few digits to the price of their 2020s.
Of course, such is demand in Burgundy, this is a perfectly rational move, if not exactly welcome for impecunious Burgundy-lovers like me. But the stark juxtaposition of 2020’s graceful plenty
With so many producers having a much-reduced crop, it’s clear that most have taken the decision to recoup the anticipated loss from 2021 by adding a few digits to the price of their 2020s
For many of my press colleagues, a fixation on labels is just not the done thing. Any discussion of packaging beyond a brief aside is liable to provoke under-thebreath muttering about books, covers and philistines: it’s the definition of superficial
Ominous clouds at Vosne-Romanée
with 2021’s miserly rations did make me wonder. Could – should? – the sharp swings in production from vintage to vintage that are already a feature of the climate crisis (and which are only likely to get more extreme) herald a shift away from the Burgundian obsession with the singular elsewhere in the word?
It’s a question that many Europeans are asking as they count the cost of their empty tanks this winter. At times like this, the terroirism of Burgundy feels almost absurdly risky, or at least liable to offer a life of hair-raisingly stressful ups and downs – and the supposedly outdated classic model of another north eastern French wine region, Champagne, starts to look a whole lot more attractive.
That model can be summarised as a celebration of the multiple over the singular. Developed at a time when Champagne was still at the margins of viticulture, long before the line of marginality was shoved 300 miles north by the bludgeon of global warming, Champagne’s houses made a virtue of the blend from the necessity of dealing with an unreliable climate.
The insurance policy was partly viticultural: spreading the risk across grape varieties and sub-regions in the knowledge that some years are better for Pinot from the Aube, others for Chardonnay from the Côtes des Blancs. But it was, famously, also temporal: putting away a substantial part of that bountiful vintage for a rainy year.
Of course, the direction of travel in Champagne during the 21st century has been similar to that taken all over the world: away from the traditional blending model towards something much more Burgundian. So much of the excitement in the region has been in the rise of single growers, working with single vineyards and plots in single vintages.
But I’m not the only person wondering if we’re about to see a reversal of that trend. The wine world already has its examples of fine wines that mix up space and time. Last year alone saw the launch of two very high-profile examples: Louis Roederer’s solera-based, “multi-vintage” replacement for Brut Premier, Collection 242, and the latest of Penfolds’ blend of five vintages of Grange, g5.
As more and more producers come to terms with the realities of a new severity of vintage variation, I reckon we’ll start seeing a lot more of these celebrations of the multiple, and a steady shift away from the singular.
“Brexit has not made it harder for me to list the wines I want, but this is because I don’t believe the full impact has yet hit the UK.
“Last year we were able to navigate around the delays and out-of-stocks; my outlook is that this year will be worse than last year.
“I am not confident, as an independent, that we can continue to outmanoeuvre the fallout from Brexit.
“Covid has stopped me attending most trade tastings and visits that I would normally attend, so I have not been able to list and refresh the producers we work with.”
Sam Howard, HarperWells, Norwich
“Our shipments from France have not been as badly affected as those from Spain, Italy and Portugal.
“The main thing with both our own shipping and that of suppliers is that it has been so unpredictable. This makes it harder to plan and maintain stock levels.”
Alex Edwards, York Wines
“Brexit is a nightmare. Stock reliability has gone out the window. We sell what we can get.”
Dorset merchant
“Although we don’t directly import, I found 2021 was the hardest year in retail to have consistency in the supply chain. Pressures on card, glass and logistics caused stock shortages and delays on many SKUs.
“It was fairly easy to switch over retail customers to different products, but communicating these widespread stock issues to wholesale customers was a little more tricky.”
Jefferson Boss, StarmoreBoss, Sheffield
“We’ve never experienced the delays in restocking certain wines as those seen this past year – and which seem to be continuing.
“Even the shipment dates, when we ask suppliers, are totally uncertain and almost invariably inaccurate.”
Nichola Roe, Wine Therapy, Cowes
“There are more reasons for delays to occur than prior to the pandemic, and many of them are rooted in more unnecessary bureaucracy. The whole business is more complicated and it is much easier to trip up.”
Robert Boutflower, Tanners Wines, Shrewsbury
“Brexit, coupled with Covid, was our trade’s worst nightmare. Brexit was always going to cause massive issues and so it came to pass: delays, increased costs, etc. A total and utter shit show from start to finish. Impossible to ship wines out to Europe for customers there too. An absolute joke.”
London merchant
“The biggest threat to my business has been Brexit. I’ve lost on average £1,000 per month on EU sales and have to watch my prices continue to rise.”
North east England merchant
“The main issue for us hasn’t been Brexit, but the Covid situation.
“At the start of 2021 there were some delays getting wines into the UK. However, we’ve had more issues with the shortage of drivers and distribution staff which has resulted in longer delivery times and less guarantee of orders arriving on time.
“Also, cut-off times at Christmas were a lot earlier than previously, meaning we had to bulk buy earlier and take a gamble to ensure we had the stock.”
Mark Stephenson, Grape & Grain, Morpeth, Northumberland
“Brexit is causing the fuck-ups, and Covid is used as the excuse.”
Henry Butler, The Butlers Wine Cellar, Brighton
“Red tape and increased costs as a result of Brexit are a joke and making shipping individual pallets way less attractive.”
Dafydd Morris, Cheers Wine Merchants, Swansea
“The supply chain is slower, more complex, more expensive, more hassle, less efficient.”
East of England merchant
“If we put the Teletubbies in charge of the government we could have more hope that they might listen to, and understand the needs of, our industry.”
Andrew Lundy, Vino, Edinburgh
“It is not so much a matter of the supply chain issues being resolved but rather that we and the suppliers we use are learning to adapt to a world that no longer operates on a ‘just-in-time’ basis.
“Realistically a global reset of two to three years, providing there are no further disruptions, can be reasonably expected.”
John Kernaghan, Liquorice, Shenfield, Essex
“I’ve been surprised by how the predicted shit storm didn’t quite materialise. Yes, there were problems, but one benefit of being predominantly retail is that we aren’t as tied to specific lines.
“Most of our wholesale business is done using Boutinot, and they’ve been pretty good with allocations and notifying of any impending problems.”
Rob Hoult, Hoults Wine Merchants, Huddersfield
“You can still get the wines that you want if you plan ahead and allow for delays.”
Jon Moore, Mumbles Fine Wines, Swansea
“Our experiences over the last year have not been too bad. We have just had to build an extra couple of weeks into the timeframe for European shipments.”
Sussex merchant
“Delays have been the bane of our existence in the past year. But totally understandable, and hopefully we’re on track to more dependable supplies now.”
Kiki Evans, Unwined Bars, London
Fitz Spencer
“Getting wines from suppliers from the GB mainland to Northern Ireland has been a real pain at times, and we’ve seen month-long delays between order placement and order arrival on goods, which would normally have taken three to four days to get to us.
“On the flip side, we’ve started to source wines ourselves direct from Europe, and can have these delivered within a 10 to 14-day timeframe, by avoiding GB mainland altogether.”
Andrew Imrie, KWM Wines & Spirits, Kilkeel
“If you want it, you can get it. We have to adapt with the times. Look to the future, not the past.”
South west England merchant
“We had some supply issues in the runup to Christmas, but we have generally managed to improvise and sort things out one way or another. For example, we had to buy our wicker hamper baskets in advance and store them, rather than risk not having them. That was a lucky gamble on our part, as it turns out. I feel confident the problems are receding now.”
Essex merchant
“Deep sea shipments are very unreliable at the moment, especially for entry-level wines. I don’t see any evidence that this is improving. However, shipments from the EU have been getting better since the start of 2021.”
West of England merchant
“We don’t supply any wholesale accounts so we are perfectly positioned to adapt to any supply issues. When we’ve not been able to get hold of a particular wine, we just get something else.”
Manchester merchant
“People are working so hard to keep the chain moving and I really appreciate this. It is so tough with transport costs rising and raw materials increasing. Plus vintage difficulties! It is so tough. We need to be mindful it will be a challenging year and work within that situation.”
