Vintage Report 2016 red Burgundies

The 2016 vintage will be remembered by the Burgundian vignerons for many years – as a year of frost, mildew and devastation – but also a vintage with a happy ending.

The successful and relatively abundant 2017 harvest have now erased the worst memories of the troublesome 2016 season and the matching mediocre yields.

Erwan Faiveley showing the 2016s

This have changed the focus somewhat from the vintage they wanted to forget – to the vintage with very little wine but saved by the bells of the 2017s.

Make no mistake desperation was visible in the summer of 2016 when the growers were fighting mildew with in some cases only 10% of the harvest still in the vineyards after the April frost and the awful spring.

In the end they did harvest and the quality was certainly better than expected by many. The first indications were positive quality wise – and tasting the wines (first wines were sampled in January 2017) the wines are lovely in their own right, and nothing short of a revelation given the conditions during the first part of growing season.

A complex vintage from frost to cask

The 2016 vintage is complex in many ways – the growing season was both hard and troublesome, and this also translates into some both complex wines and a rather challenging evaluation of the vintage.

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