Scroll down for tasting notes and scores for Charles’ top-scoring Vosne-Romanée 2021 wines
Few were spared the impact of the frost in Vosne-Romanée or neighbouring Flagey-Echézeaux, where many reported losses of 70% – 90%.
Such a drastic reduction in volume poses problems, since making great wine with such a small quantity of fruit is difficult. ‘It’s hard to make beef Bourguignon with only two pieces of beef,’ is how Marie-Christine Mugneret of Domaine Georges Mugneret-Gibourg explained the situation.
The reduced volume led some winemakers to use more whole bunches than usual to fill the tanks. Still, rigorous sorting was necessary to remove bunches touched by mildew and green, underripe stems.
Many growers resorted to cutting out the central portion of the stem at its thickest part and leaving the rest, a very time-consuming process. Bertrand de Villaine expressed the challenge at the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti: ‘It is very difficult to express the terroir but very easy to make the terroir silent.’
Marie-Andrée Mugneret.
(Image credit: Domaine Georges Mugneret-Gibourg)
Another solution to reduced volumes is to blend parcels. Louis-Michel Liger-Belair at the Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair blended all his premier cru parcels, including Petits Monts, Suchots, Chaumes and Brûlées to make one cuvée. However, the concentration of what remained was superb, and the final result was an extraordinary wine. Liger-Belair did bottle Aux Reignots as a sublime stand-alone wine, but his losses were 75%.
Despite the frost damage, there were occasional bright spots. Marie-Christine Mugneret said that their Bourgogne vines were spared. The grapes come from a single parcel known as Les Lutinières that is on the wrong side of the Route Nationale, yet before the AOC was introduced in 1936, the wine was sold as Vosne-Romanée village wine. From 2021, they will include the name of the lieu-dit on the label. Fortunately, it is both abundant and delicious.
