Vin d`émotion – can you feel it?

The core of getting great Burgundy joys and revelations is appreciating vin d`émotion, discovering the emotional values in these lively and joyful wines.

Emotional wines come from vineyards that are alive, and not sprayed to death or overworked with heavy equipment… It’s from vineyards with a lively microclimate… with insects, biodiversity … a vineyard that is alive … where the soil is full of life.

Smell the great organic and biodynamic vineyards … can you feel it … ohhh yes you can… the flowers, the insects and intensity of impressions. This gets into your wine as a livelyness, energy and complexity that should be in a great vin d`émotion.

Vin d`émotion

I started working with the term and concept Vin d’emotion a bit more than 5 years back when a small group of friends sat together in Vosne-Romanée to define what a truely emotional wine should offer.

I have been working on understanding and refining the definition of Vin d`emotion ever since that day. It is a work in progress … but we are almost there …

The emotional wine – the elements

There are many factors that determine if a wine becomes a vin d`émotion. To better understand, I have just made a short listing … with the most important points. Please note many of these effects are simultaneous…. i.e. they can non be separated 100% … but for the purpose of explaining … we try.

Terroir

In my mind, the terroir is one of the important components, as some terroirs just have more energy, tension and vivacity. The terroir is the soul of the wine … and without a great terroir, there are no great wines.

Vin d`émotion come from vineyards that are alive, and not sprayed to death or overworked with heavy equipment… It’s from vineyards with a lively microclimate… with insects, biodiversity … a vineyard that is alive … where the soil is full of life.

Lesser wines can, however, shine if the rest is 100% in place. The terroir is, however, the core, and (normally) is to a large degree unchanged year after year.

To unfold the terroir, the viticulture is essential, and only terroirs that are treated with respect to nature express the true complexity and potential of the terroir.

This is essential!

Sepage and clones

To me, the sepage – clone … massale selection .. is an important parameter, as the different clones react differently to the weather and the terroirs. This is also a core parameter, and is not changed often … 50-year-old vines are pretty normal. This is quite overlooked but can definitely be a great influence… just look at the 2023 vintage where the Pinot Droit struggled with the high yields. More about the sepage will come..

Basic ripeness … weather

The basic ripeness is a result of weather and the external settings. The core of this is, of course, the basis ripeness given by the weather and the vintage, including the viticulture. This is the basic timing … when sugar ripeness, acidity is taken into account and adjusted on the rough scale. This is mainly related to the last year … hence in recent times.

Note, however, that the last ripeness in this context is related to the phenolic ripeness. This is not entirely correct as sugar-ripeness (normal fermentation) and the phenolic ripeness sort of happen simultaneously… but with the phenolic ripeness at the very end … sort of!

Phenolic ripeness is Vin d`émotion

The harvest time and the phenolic ripeness are very closely related … as the finetuning of the phenolic ripeness primarily is adjusted by moving the harvest time. This is the key … to finding the optimal phenolic ripeness.

The ripeness process can in principle not be separated … but it is useful to see the phenolic ripeness as the last step in the ripening process …

The phenolic ripeness = Vin d`émotion

The true vin d`émotion only unfolds when you have both the love and talent of the vigneron and the blessing of nature – the terroir, sepage and the grace of the weather.