Vosne-Romanée & Nuits-St-Georges 2024: Top buys from a lively and fruity bunch

Some have described the southern portion of the Côte de Nuits, from the Clos de Vougeot to the southernmost part of Nuits-St-Georges, as the epicentre of the weather problems in 2024.

Many wines struggled to deliver the combination of structure and sumptuous fruit that some years promise. Both yields and quality varied by estate.

Scroll down for Charles Curtis MW’s 20 top-scoring Vosne-Romanée & Nuits-St-Georges 2024 wines

Unless stringent measures were taken throughout the year, from treating the vines to sorting the fruit meticulously and extracting colour and tannin with great care, the wines can be light, lacking in fruit expression and somewhat astringent.

Tristan Méo of Méo-Camuzet describes the season: ‘2024 was a constant fight in the vineyard and a constant lookout in the winery. Total acidity is relatively low, and pH is somewhat elevated. Oenologists fear analyses like these, but in the end, they are much better than we expected. We feel that the wines of 2024 have enough concentration to age in barrel normally.

He adds: ‘We are “only” down 40%. Baseline quality was better than 2021. We needed to leave the grapes in the tank for a very long time (21 days) but in the end, we feel it paid off.’

Domaine de la Romanée-Conti farms biodynamically, but despite the challenges of this system in 2024, it managed its losses efficiently. Co-director Bertrand de Villaine says: ‘We noticed disparities between plots, but also between vines in the same row.’

The domaine began to pick on 18 September. They picked 2.2ha of Corton in one morning (with a yield of 4hl/ha) and finished six days later with Romanée-Conti, although Aubert de Villaine was not keen on having people picking on a Sunday.

Montrachet and Bâtard-Montrachet were also picked that same day. Rain had just begun to fall as they completed these important vineyards.

Despite the challenges, they continued to use 100% whole bunches in their tanks. ‘We clean up the bunches so they look good, but we still use 100% whole bunches for the fermentation since we don’t know how to vinify completely destemmed grapes,’ says De Villaine.

Herculean efforts

Some producers had even more difficulty. Yves Confuron picked the grapes from his family domaine, Domaine Confuron-Coteditot, between 28 September and 8 October. He saw yields of 2-4hl/ha on average.

In his opinion, ‘those who say they harvested 20-40 hl/ha, there is a problem: either it isn’t ripe, they bought in grapes, or they’re lying.’

He produced a regional Bourgogne blended from grapes from Clos Vougeot, Charmes-Chambertin and Mazis-Chambertin because even if the grapes are all grand cru, if you blend grapes from different villages, the highest appellation you can obtain is a regional Bourgogne.

In these appellations, the very best producers and great terroirs were able to produce lovely wines through Herculean efforts, but the wines from this sector should be approached with caution.

Top-scoring Vosne-Romanée & Nuits-St-Georges 2024 wines:

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