Putting 2021 into the Correct Perspective

I have now started to taste the 2021 vintage, and one of my first visits was to the Meuilley vigneron Nicolas Faure. This tasting highlighted the 2021 vintage and brought it into focus after tasting many great 2020s.

It’s important to see 2021 in the correct perspective after sampling the mighty 2020s; mighty in expression, weight, and structure.

The 2021s can certainly offer many hedonistic blessings – when they are well made. But the distance between beauty and failure is not that great in 2021. The wines are cooler and more vividly fragile than the ’20s, ’19s, and ’18s.

It is a return to Burgundy wines without a strong hint of global warming. They are still substantial in palate and expression, and their floral beauty and vivacity can recall cooler years like 2010 and 2013. They are, at their best, ripe, while not showing the global-warming-influenced ripeness of many recent vintages.

The 2021s clearly do not equal the 2010s quality-wise (one of my favourite vintages), but there are some stylistic similarities to that year’s effortlessness. And the ’21s don’t show the roughness of the 2013s, but do have, at their best, a bit of that year’s floral energy and vividness.

It was not a great year, 2021. While 2020 was great in all its might, ’21 is a more classical year in which the wines express their more fragile side. They are finer and more delicate than the 2013s, but still with some of the vivid energy that is now gracing the ’13s.

Sadly, the variation in quality is significant, and while the best producers have made fine, interesting wines, less quality-conscious producers have sadly done what they do best: made some awful wines.

My tasting program will hopefully show that many producers have kept the hedonistic spirit glowing in the mid-palate, where sufficiently ripe phenolics grace cool bouquets with complexity and energy.

At its best, 2021 expresses the beauty of Burgundy – the variation, fragility, and light beauty of a cool wine from these magnificent terroirs without any warm-year makeup. Burgundy unmasked? Or perhaps naked?

It should be noted that the frost damage in 2021 could have produced some really intense and concentrated wines due to the low yields.