Vinous – Neal Martin
Neal Martin’s lengthy report on the vintage comes with a caveat: “these are prenatal snapshots taken directly from barrel or assembled as estimations of the final blend, not definitive, immutable judgments”.
Snapshots though they may be, he runs through the growing season – and how producers handled the crop – in detail. The top line, however, is that the hot, dry season produced wines of “remarkable freshness”.
He particularly rates the whites, the best of which “almost shimmer with mineralité”, he says. He finds great consistency across appellations, with “aromatic delineation” and “uninhibited evocation of place”, and recommends looking at Marsannay for good-value finds.
As for the reds, he highlights the floral perfume, freshness and fine tannins (thanks to careful work in the winery) on show. While he found some “spellbinding, ethereal wines that set the pulse racing”, he urges caution over declaring it a “dead-cert legendary vintage”. His main concern seems to be whether producers can capture the wines’ vibrancy and tension in bottle. He points to Pommard, Beaune and Savigny-lès-Beaune as appellations on the rise and worth keeping a particular eye out for.
Read Neal Martin’s full report, notes and scores on Vinous
Inside Burgundy – Jasper Morris MW
Jasper Morris MW reports, with some delight, that 2020 is “a wonderful vintage for white wines”, a result that – as we found – no one can quite fully account for. He feels the wines sit somewhere between 2017 and 2014 (with those picked earlier leaning more toward the latter) – but are undoubtedly classical white Burgundies.
He found the reds more varied in quality – with “some utterly spectacular wines for the long term, and some disasters”. Some producers, he felt, waited too long to pick (seeking phenolic ripeness, but in doing so developing over-ripe flavours and high alcohols). He is quick to emphasize, however, that results varied even within the same cellar, so broad-stroke generalisations don’t work for the year, or even for a producer. In general, he found the Côte de Nuits fared better than the Côte de Beane, and the best wines are superb. He thinks they offer “profound intensity” – more so than either 2019 or 2018, and compares them to those of 2005, with just a hint of the “ripe flesh of 2003”. They are, he says, wines with “immense ageing potential”.
Read Jasper Morris MW’s full overview, notes and scores on Inside Burgundy
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