White Burgundy 2022: Three domaines with wines worth waiting for

Burgundy’s annual en primeur season in London, which takes place in January, is both a blessing and a curse. It organises the market and makes it possible for many Burgundy lovers to taste the new vintage, but it can also mean that some wines are assessed prematurely.

Although simple regional Bourgogne blanc and rouge and some village-level wines are delicious at this stage, often the more complex wines are not yet ready or available to taste.

This spring, I caught up with three key producers of long-aged white Burgundies to taste their 2022 wines, which weren’t shown at the en primeur tastings in January, and therefore didn’t make it into our Burgundy 2022 en primeur report.

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of top 2022 white wines from Burgundy

Time in barrel

It was once the norm for Burgundy producers to age their wines only until the barrels were needed for the following vintage. Ten months of barrel maturation was considered to be sufficient.

Today, most Burgundies (red and white) will age for 18 months or longer before bottling. Some producers give their wines a year in cask and then rack into tank for another six months on the lees; others rack and return the wines to cask, or avoid racking the wines entirely.

There are various rationales for extended lees ageing, including aroma, flavour and reduction.

The lees break down over time and contribute yeasty, leesy aromas. Flavour uptake is hastened and amplified if the lees are stirred (batonnage), although many Burgundy producers today avoid stirring the lees too much to prevent premature oxidation of the future wine.

Lees act as a reductive agent during the maturation process, keeping the wine fresh. Wines that undergo extended lees ageing tend to take on a flinty, mineral, almost saline character and bright, chiselled concentration that can be very refreshing.

As a result, the best white Burgundy is not typically released to the market until nearly two years after the vintage. The 2022 Burgundies tasted in January are unlikely to be delivered before the autumn of 2024.

Domaines Jean-Claude Bachelet, Leflaive and Roulot are just three of Burgundy’s many proponents of extended lees ageing, bringing an unparalleled richness and depth to some of the world’s greatest white wines.

Three white Burgundy producers to follow

Domaine Jean-Claude Bachelet

This excellent domaine is less well-known than it should be to anglophone readers, perhaps because it is located in St-Aubin. The Bachelet family also has significant holdings in Chassagne-Montrachet and Puligny (including a sliver of Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet grand cru) and has been making wine for eight generations.

Brothers Benoît and Jean-Baptiste have taken over most of the winemaking duties from their father, Jean-Claude.

The domaine is certified organic (since 2019) and farms according to biodynamic principles, but that’s not to say it makes natural wine.

‘Natural wine is more about being “natural” than about being a terroir-driven wine. We are lucky to have beautiful terroirs,’ says Benoît.

Benoît explains: ‘You can tell if the fruit is ripe just by looking. It’s important not to pick not too early – or too late. One shouldn’t confuse freshness with acidity. The freshness here comes from a long maturation; it originates from the dry extract of the wine.’

The wines are lightly crushed and slowly pressed before settling briefly and barreling down with most of the lees for fermentation.

Benoît and his brother believe in long maturation. Every wine, including the Bourgogne Chardonnay, will see two winters in cask, and the 2022 vintage will ship to the market in October–November 2024.

Domaine Leflaive

Domaine Leflaive is one of the most highly-regarded producers of white wine in all of Burgundy.

Third-generation Anne-Claude Leflaive took over in 1994, working with winemaker Pierre Morey (who had been appointed by her father the prior year) until his retirement in 2008.

Since the untimely death of Anne-Claude in 2015, her nephew Brice de La Morandière has run the estate; he appointed current winemaker Pierre Vincent in 2017, who will be leaving the estate at the end of 2024.

The family farms 24ha in the Côte de Beaune and as much again in the Mâconnais, entirely planted to Chardonnay. The domaine has been farmed according to biodynamic principles since the harvest of 1997; Brice de La Morandière believes that this has dramatically benefited the clay-rich soils.

The Chardonnay grapes are lightly crushed before a slow press, a brief settling and then fermentation in cask. During the first year, the wines are left in barrel and not racked until August.

Typically, 5% new casks are used for the Bourgogne Blanc, 10%–20% for the premier cru wines, and 25% for the grand cru wines. Wines are then assembled in stainless steel (Domaine Leflaive had the first stainless steel tanks in Puligny) and bottled in their second winter.

‘Not too bad,’ Brice de la Morandière muses, in his typically Gallic, understated way, after we taste the 2022 vintage together. He believes that the 2022 vintage is ‘in the line of 2017 and 2020; it has the potential to show the same finesse as the 2020 vintage, it’s that big’.

The team began picking on 27 August in Puligny. In the Mâconnais, they started four days earlier as the grapes typically ripen sooner there, although the valley of Mâcon-Verzé, oriented north to south, gets more cold air than the others.

Despite rumours of generous yields elsewhere in the Côte de Beaune, this was not the case at Domaine Leflaive, where the average yield was 42hl/ha; from 35hl/ha in the grands crus to 48–49hl/ha in Bourgogne.

In recent years, Leflaive has steadfastly refused to show its wines en primeur; the offer doesn’t go out to importers until the second spring after the harvest and to clients later that year.

Domaine Roulot

Domaine Roulot is famous for its Meursault wines of uncommon vivacity and grip – these are sappy, saline wines with abundant tension and a characteristic reductive edge. Recent vintages are particularly impressive.

Although 2022 was hot and dry, enough water was delivered by the late June storms to see the vines through. Picking began on 25 August and continued through early September. The wines are enticing, almost lush – and they have the concentration to last for a decade at least.

The grapes are lightly crushed and gently pressed before settling overnight and fermenting, mainly in used casks, with most of their lees. The wines are left for a year before being racked and blended. Often, they spend a further seven to nine months in the tank, in addition to the barrel ageing – but this year, some were bottled after just six.

Although there are experiments with glass globes and amphorae that manager Paul Delorme qualifies as ‘interesting, if a bit simple’, ageing in used casks is the standard. There is no new wood for the calling card Bourgogne, just 10%-15% for the village bottlings and about 20% for the premier cru wines.

The focus on the purity of the fruit serves them well and some of the wines, such as the Perrières Premier Cru 2022, are nothing short of monumental.

2022 whites from three top Burgundy domaines:

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