Burgundy 2024: Victory from the jaws of defeat

Burgundy 2024: Buyer’s Report

The first thing people will tell you about the 2024 vintage in Burgundy is how very small it is, particularly when it comes to Chablis and the Pinots of the Côte de Nuits.

And while this is true, what is so much more important, and what I hope to persuade you of here, is that the quality of the vintage is truly wonderful. I’d go as far as saying it is exceptional for the whites.

The growing season: gruelling toil in the vineyards, but easy work in the cellar

“Traumatising” is how one grower described the season. The rain was relentless. It started in October 2023 and carried right on through to February 2025, with just a few spells of respite. One of them, fortunately, fell in August, just before harvest.

The season started off with spells of frost in a few patches - the southern Côte de Beaune and Chablis in particular. This was followed by a high incidence of coulure caused by cold conditions at flowering - meaning aborted berries, and looser bunches. In moderation, this is often a welcome check on volumes. However in 2024, Mother Nature has yet more torments to mete out.

The relentless rain was combined with a lack of sun. Gloomy, overcast, but not necessarily cold conditions, meant mildew edged its way in early, and then ripped through the region with such venomous velocity, almost no-one was spared. It hit Pinot the hardest, though Chardonnay also suffered.

Biodynamic, organic, and conventional alike were fighting nature with all weapons at their disposal. It was described, by many, as the most difficult season in a generation.

What impact does mildew have on the fruit? It causes the berries to shrivel and dry out. These mostly drop off in the vineyard, meaning looser bunches and better airflow, or are shaken loose at harvest time before they even hit the sorting table. In short: bad for quantity, good for quality.

Mercifully, the fortuitous break in the rainy conditions around August and September meant that there was no issue with rot. So what little fruit made it to the winery arrived in tip-top condition having been dried out by the welcome sunny period, punctuated by a refreshing north wind. The vinification that followed was easy, quick, and uncomplicated. The only challenge was for smaller cuvées, and many winemakers chose to blend some of these. So this is a vintage not short of unicorn wines.

The whites: much to celebrate

Is this the best vintage for Chardonnay in the past decade? I’m going to put my cards on the table and declare it so. Lighter alcohols at harvest time mean the wines are taut and ethereal (12-12.5%). Vibrant acidities give them tremendous energy. And yields that range from -10 to -40% or so have ensured precise and complex textures.

The one outlier for volumes is poor old Chablis, which as well as the frost, coulure and mildew, also sustained exceptional losses from 15 minutes of violent hail on 1st May. Some vineyards lost up to 90% of their potential crop.

The character of the wines is linear and elegant, with a beautifully light-footed complexity. You can buy with confidence across the board: the wines are gorgeous. They should drink well from youth, and I’ve no doubt will age with grace.

The reds: elegant, pure, and juicy

This was a fascinating vintage of reds to taste, and right up my street, personally. We may have been blessed with excellent ripeness in recent years, with the one exception of 2021 where we saw some lightly vegetal, cool notes return, harking back to a previous era (and has actually made them sensational early drinkers). But the 2024s are something altogether different.

A few growers compared, at a push, to 2021 but with more ripeness (I did not taste one vegetal note), others to 2010, but again, not as cool or tightly structured. But most agree with how Frédéric Lafarge put it: unlike any other vintage, it is completely unique.

Arthur Clair summed it up nicely: elegant, pure, and juicy. The tannins are ripe and sweet, but the lighter alcohol makes for refreshingly vibrant wines. Perhaps lighter in density than some recent vintages like 2020/22/23, but with their own intricate complexity and fantastic, precise length.

If you have bought a load of recent releases like 2020 and have started to wonder when the wines will come round (they will, eventually), 2024 is the antidote.

Many growers chose to reduce the amount of whole-bunch this year, while others used it masterfully. It seems that both approaches were viable. New oak is broadly down across the board, with most growers opting to highlight the beautiful fruit over bolstering the structure.

And while I don’t want to put too much emphasis on low yields - the reason to buy this year is not because of scarcity, but quality - it is worth noting that some villages, particularly Vosne-Romanée, Nuits-St-Georges and Gevrey-Chambertin, are down a staggering 80-90% in places. So if you like the sound of these wines, you will need to be quick.

Blockbusters they are not, but I like them all the more for their lighter balance. Pleasingly, for the impatient (I am one of their number), we won’t need to wait a decade or more. Like the 2017s I expect them to drink well from their youth.

The market: the correction might just be here

For a few years now an imbalance has been building in Burgundy. Release prices have been high, climbing most years, leaving in their wake a growing pile of expensive recent vintages not yet ready to drink struggling to compete with a softened secondary market where mature vintages are, when attractively priced, snapped up quickly.

The sharp shortages in 2024 red burgundy may be the correction the market needs. The whites are just flat out smart buys because they are so effortlessly good, and I expect these to sell well on release. For the most part growers are not increasing prices, recognising the need for calm in the market. Red producers will find this a particularly hard pill to swallow, but they are not deaf to echoes in the marketplace.

As ever, we will select the wines and domaines which we believe offer genuine value for their quality.

Each year we see a few more domaines choose to step away from the traditional January en primeur release. This is partly because an increasing number are favouring longer élévages, and feel the wines simply aren’t ready to show or sell at this point. These domaines will release their 2024s sometime in 2026 and are, therefore, not included in this offer. Similarly, the wines from the Côte Chalonnaise, Mâconnais, and Beaujolais will be released later in the year.

But rest assured there are plenty of exciting domaines being released in January, and for many you’ll need to be as quick as ever to secure a case or two. As ever, we also have our small selection of highly sought-after domaines who are a full year behind and will be on allocation.

A final word: small but perfectly formed

Before visiting to taste, I imagined a potentially difficult vintage, hampered by bad weather, presented by some deflated growers. But the growers were as surprised and delighted by the vintage as we were to taste. The scars of the season are beginning to heal, and they now recognise that what they have in barrel is something really quite special.

I couldn’t put it better than Géraldine Godot at Domaine de l’Arlot, so she has the final word: “It’s a vintage without pretension, but with an understated length and elegance.”