White Burgundy 2009: Time to drink up?

Tim Atkin MW takes a look at 2009 in the Côte d’Or and picks his top 10 wines from a recent retrospective tasting in London...

Vintages in Burgundy are best considered with a degree of hindsight. Up close and personal they can appear to be something they are not.

The 2009 vintage

Almost as soon as the grapes were picked, 2009 was heralded as a great harvest, partly because it was warm and dry, marking a break with the more difficult growing seasons of 2007 and 2008. There was also a degree of spill over from the hype that characterised the 2009 Bordeaux en primeur campaign, trumpeted as a ‘vintage of the century’.

Scroll down to see Tim’s tasting notes and scores for his top 10 white Côte d’Or 2009 Burgundies from the tasting

In Burgundy, 2009 produced reds with lots of fruit that are generally accessible, but (in most cases) won’t make old bones. In their youth, they were often ripe, supple and ‘new world’ in style, drinkable though not sold straight from the barrel. At the time, it was the best vintage since 2005, albeit very different in style. The latter vintage is still not ready to drink; 2009, by and large, is.

But what about the whites? Thanks to Sarah Marsh MW, who assembled a line up of wines from some of the best growers and négociants, I had the chance to try 29 white Côte d’Or 2009 wines. Chablis, which didn’t have a great harvest, wasn’t featured, but no matter: 2010 was the superior vintage there.

The tasting

The wines were mixed, both in terms of quality and style, with a number of high-profile disappointments, not least from Domaine Leflaive. But overall I was impressed, and even a little surprised.

I expected most of the whites to be for early drinking and therefore a little tired, but the opposite was true. Burgundians seem to have learned from the mistakes of the past, especially those that led to premature oxidation.

Early picking, acidification, blocking malolactic fermentation, and the judicious use of sulphur dioxide were all used, either alone or in combination, by growers keen to preserve freshness in the wines.

Producers had already lived through 2003, of course, which was an even hotter vintage and benefitted from that experience when it came to making their 2009s. Terroir counted too, of course – it was noticeable that many of the best wines were from cooler and higher sites, although, this being Burgundy, there were exceptions. People who generally make more mineral styles tended to succeed here, and the best wines are very enjoyable indeed and will age and develop for a while longer.

The less appealing wines were either too old or, at the other end of the spectrum, clumsily acidified, with what I took to be a sweet and sour character. 2009 isn’t 2010 or, where the whites are concerned, 2014, but it’s a vintage that will give a lot of people pleasure now and in the near future.

Tim’s top 10 2009 white Burgundies from the Côte d’Or:

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