The news is out for the 2024 harvest in Burgundy and it’s pretty stark. “Scarce, yet flavourful” reads the lead line from the regional press release.
In what has gotten to be rather typical situation in Burgundy, after two plentiful years (2022 and 2023), 2024 has been very, very lean, largely due to adverse weather that lowered the crop yields. It wasn’t however one single event that led to the losses as was the case with heavy frost in 2021. It was simply a hard year with plentiful rain after an early bud break which had some frost issues, but these weren’t widespread as in other years.
But the yields are miserly in the end with some vineyards in Chablis producing only 10hl/ha. In their case, a great many problems arrived in the form of hail in May. The Chablis producers are of the opinion that production will most likely be half of what was seen in 2023.
Overall, it would have been far, far worse as a whole had August not been warmer and drier than usual which allowed the grapes that were able to stick it out, to fully ripen.
As is typical, the news about the “high quality” is being spread far and wide. One can only believe that this pre-praise is due to a smaller crop which almost always means higher prices. It was the case in 2021 that those were the ethereal, delicate wines of a Burgundy from the past, as was noted in the the report earlier this year.
But it’s hard to know how it will really end up as this burst of heat does make for a broader, spicier (more alcoholic) Pinot Noir as was shown in the 2022 and 2023 wines. But, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a “better’ Burgundy as riper Pinot Noir can be found in many, many regions at this point and it’s the barely making it aspect to Burgundy that makes it what it is.
In any case, the prices have gotten far too wild for most people anyways. This is why the ‘Hautes’ have been in such demand as of late as they’re offering up far better wines than they used to and at prices that seem downright reasonable for Burgundy.
We’ll see how 2024 stacks up in the end, but given how hard people push these generally very expensive wines these days, don’t expect the reviews that start coming out next year to be anything less than exploding with praise.
