Burgundy 2022 en primeur: Full report plus top-scoring wines

The 2022 growing season from April to September saw near-record heat and sunshine for the Burgundy region, but well-timed rains helped to deliver grapes that exhibited few characteristics of a hot summer. The fruit was healthy and ripe, with often lower alcohol levels than in 2020 – also a year of significant heat along with drought across Burgundy – and just slightly lower acidity. In the context of what Jeremy Seysses of Domaine Dujac calls ‘the new normal’, such a result in 2022 must be called an encouraging success.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for Charles Curtis MW’s Burgundy 2022 selection

Style & quality

The red wines from 2022 are deeply coloured, with a lush fruit expression, full body, well- developed but velvety tannins and abundant extract. The whites have a lush fruit character spanning ripe apple, peach and apricot and relatively soft acidity, suggesting these wines are primarily for early drinking. To achieve proper balance, some winemakers had to acidify.

In both reds and whites, it is the acid balance that holds 2022 Burgundy back from the very highest level, but the wines will be accessible and early- drinking, and the reds should age well.

Overall quality is very high for red wines and good to very good for white wines. The red wines are consistent from the Côte de Nuits [in the north] down through the Côte Chalonnaise, and there will be many wines worth laying down.

The effect of the heat on the white wines becomes more pronounced as one moves south, though there are exceptions to this and whites also worthy of ageing. In terms of quantity, the yield was up more than 70% from the frost-stricken 2021 harvest – hopefully this will help growers avoid price increases.

Burgundy 2022: Curtis’ wines of the vintage

White: Domaine Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey, Montrachet 99pts

Red: Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Romanée-Conti 100pts

Decanter vintage rating: Côte d’Or

2022: Whites 4/5; Reds 4.5/5

2021: Whites 4/5; Reds 3.5/5

2020: Whites 4.5/5; Reds 4/5

2019: Whites 4/5; Reds 5/5

2018: Whites 3.5/5; Reds 4/5

Water story

After a cold snap in January 2022, February was much warmer than average and March continued warm, exposing the vineyards to frost in April. Fortunately, the vines had not yet started their growth in earnest, and when the frost arrived between 3-11 April, damage was limited.

Warmer weather followed the frost, and the vines developed quickly. Flowering occurred from 19-26 May, two weeks ahead of the norm.

There was very little loss to coulure or millerandage [fruit-set problems], presaging a very large crop. Just after the bunches formed, the region received a deluge of rain over five days from 21-25 June that varied from 20mm-90mm according to the region, with localised flooding exacerbating things in places.

Thunderstorms brought some hail damage, but it was not widespread. ‘But for that rain, there would have been no harvest,’ says Frédéric Barnier of Louis Jadot.

July and August were hot and dry, and if the rain had not topped off water reserves at the end of June, the vines would have suffered the scorching drought conditions. The worst effects were relieved by light showers in July and August, and the health of the vines remained excellent due to the hot and dry conditions.

The sporadic heat stress drew out the ripening. Some growers concerned with freshness picked as early as 20 August, while others – more concerned with ripe skins, seeds and stems – waited until the beginning of September or beyond. The harvest was complete nearly everywhere by the third week in September. Had there been less fruit on the vines, then overripe fruit, higher alcohol and lower acidity would have been more widespread in 2022 – but the abundant grapes and generous rainfall in June set the region up for a vintage with both quality and quantity.

Burgundy’s vines are slowly adapting to the reality of global warming. Perhaps as importantly, grape-growers and winemakers are also adapting their techniques, and 2022 generally appears much more successful than the first global warming vintages of 2003 and 2005. Although the wines don’t have the grip and freshness we saw in 2019 and 2020, the vintage delivered an abundant crop of hugely drinkable wines, including reds that will age gracefully in the cellar.

Around the appellations

Côte de Nuits

Despite relatively homogenous results, the growing season of 2022 varied from village to village in the Côte de Nuits. The vineyards of Gevrey-Chambertin suffered in the storms of late June. According to Cyrielle Rousseau of Domaine Armand Rousseau, it was complicated, with 15 barrels less than average in the producer’s Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Clos St Jacques [due to flooding] and two hail storms.

Nicolas Rossignol of Rossignol-Trapet remarked that the hail hit the northern part of Gevrey, on the north side of the Combe de Lavaux known as the ‘Côte St-Jacques’, where they experienced 170mm of rain in a single week. Hail damage, however, was very localised, and growers to the north and south of Gevrey did not report the same conditions.

The centre of the Côte de Nuits was spared the hail and, according to Dujac’s Jeremy Seysses: ‘This is the “new normal” [heat and sunshine], yet there was not the relentless heat we had in 2003. The nights were cooler than they were in 2003. Although the dates in 2022 were similar to those in 2018, and I was expecting [the wines] to be similar, they’re not.’

Alexandre Abel at Domaine Ponsot comments: ‘2020 was atypical because of the concentration of the tannins and the acidity during the blockage; 2022 is more classic and reminds me of 2015.’

Further south in Vosne-Romanée, Bertrand de Villaine of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti points out: ‘It’s impossible to think of 2022 without thinking of 2021; these are a pair, rather like 2016 and 2017. We have to avoid falling into the trap of having too much sugar, which poses questions for the future since everything seems to be ready simultaneously.’ Luckily, according to de Villaine, ‘in 2022 we were stressed, but the grapes were not in a hurry’.

Côte de Beaune

There was less of an inundation at the end of June in the Côte de Beaune, and a greater frequency of small steady showers in July and August. Growers such as Frédéric Lafarge in Volnay described 2022 as a ‘perfect’ vintage. The rains at the end of June brought much less water than in the Côte de Nuits – 80mm rather than 150mm. However, several smaller showers brought 20mm each throughout the season, which allowed the vines to withstand the heatwave well. Lafarge reports similar pH levels [acidity] to 2020 but slightly lower alcohol, which fell to between 13%-13.5%.

In the white wine villages of Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet, results were consistent. According to François Carillon in Puligny: ‘2022 was not easy, but almost, with small amounts of rain falling regularly in July and August to encourage ripening.’ He continues: ‘My grandfather never picked in August; my father, twice. I don’t even count the times any more. However, we ended up with pH levels between 3.15-3.20, while in 2015, we were at 3.50. Things weren’t so bad in 2022 after all.’

In Chassagne, Pierre-Yves Colin gave the whites of 2022 the edge: ‘The crop was lower in 2020, and the freshness is about the same, but there is more concentration in 2022… even if you try to make wine for the future, they are showing quite well right now.’

Côte Chalonnaise

The climate dynamic in the Côte Chalonnaise differs from that of the Côte d’Or in that there are no cooling winds from the Hautes-Côtes streaming into the valleys that break up the slope, since the limestone outcroppings here are more irregular. The region is generally hotter and drier than the Côte d’Or further north, and this proved to be the case in 2022. Overall, the whites (Aligoté from Bouzeron and Chardonnay from Montagny) are lush and rich, with soft acidity, making them an early-drinking vintage; reds from Mercurey were concentrated and tannic, while those of Givry were often silkier and more approachable.

Mâconnais

The 2022 vintage in the Mâconnais was, if anything, even hotter and drier than the Côte d’Or. Winemaker Florent Rouve of Vins Rijckaert notes that excessively hot and dry conditions caused vines to shut down in August, which helped keep alcohol levels in check. Data from the BIVB regional wine board corroborates this, showing slightly lower sugar levels than in the Côte d’Or and marginally higher levels of malic and total acidity. Julien Desplans of Maison Verget and Domaine Guffens-Heynen ventures that ‘2022 risks being a very charming year’.

COMING SOON

The score table listing Charles’ top Burgundy 2022 wines all scoring 94 points or above

Quick links:

See further analysis and top-scoring wines of the following areas:

Morey-St-Denis | Meursault | Chambolle-Musigny | Gevrey-Chambertin | Pommard and Volnay | Vosne-Romanée & Nuits-St-Georges | Chassagne & Puligny Montrachet | Northern Côte de Beaune | Best value

A taste of the top Burgundy 2022 wines

Wines were tasted non-blind. Wines are listed in order of white then red, then by scores, and then alphabetically by producer. The 2022s are bottled from January 2024, hence prices, stockists and alcohols are not yet finalised. Contact specialist merchant for allocations or to enquire about en primeur tastings. The following 40 wines were Charles Curtis MW’s selection for particularly notable quality and value among the 650 wines he scored from the 2022 Burgundy vintage.

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