BURGUNDY 2023

Following on from the success of 2022, Burgundy has once again produced a vintage that offers both quality and quantity, but weather conditions were such that the results are patchier. Thankfully, you have our expert's selection of 50 excellent wines to point you in the right direction

- CHARLES CURTIS MW

In the opinion of Frédéric Lafarge of Domaine Michel Lafarge, ‘2022 was a great vintage; the downside is 2023 was a vintage of great charm’. If all’s well that ends well, the 2023 vintage in Burgundy can be considered a great success. The vintage wasn’t without its challenges, however, and thus quality is more uneven than in 2022.

‘The biggest trap was to avoid producing too much. The vines were not to fall into excess,’ says négociant Benjamin Leroux. ‘It was essential to work well in the vines in order to control the yield. The quality is lovely – the whites are great if you picked in time in the sun; it’s a question of yield and of sorting. It was absolutely obligatory [green harvest] to remove bunches before they begin to ripen]. In certain places, we had to drop half of the crop.’

Quality & style

Overall quality was good – even very good; on rare occasions, it was truly superb. The style of the wines generally is very ripe. They should be approachable early, but often lack the structure for long ageing; the weather wasn’t homogenous throughout Burgundy. Local issues also created regional differences, including isolated hailstorms in Nuits-St-Georges, Meursault, Mercurey and the Mâconnais.

There are high similarities and differences between 2023 and other recent vintages. 2023 is in the line of sunny, hot vintages such as 2022, 2020, 2019 and 2018 due to the heatwave at the end of the season. Overall, 2023 was the warmest year on record, both in Burgundy and globally. ‘Paradoxically, however, in Burgundy it was less sunny than usual and cooler than the norm during July and the first half of August,’ Nicolas Rossignol-Trapet of Domaine Rossignol-Trapet says. He says: ‘2023 was not a hot year; it was a cold year that finished hot.’