Burgundy Keeps Ringing the Changes

Where are you on the Pinot Noir spectrum?

Are you just discovering Burgundy, having moved from Central Otago and Sonoma? Are you just discovering Burgundy, having decided you're a tiny bit bored with Bordeaux? Or are you moving away from Burgundy, having given up on the prices, and are investigating Martinborough and Mornington Peninsula instead?

Where you are will affect how you react to the 2017 Burgundies, now on sale, though not necessarily in bottle. And just as the Pinot Noir tribes have changed in recent years, so has Burgundy.

Time was when the Primeur tastings in London in January did not always provide unalloyed joy. The wines could be skinny and acidic; chewily tannic, too. Tasting notes might have said: "Green, but some good aromas". I can't remember when I last encountered greenness at those tastings; maybe 2013, at the less ripe end? Now all the talk is of lush, ripe years – maybe in the future so warm that growers will be planting Syrah and Grenache.

Suggest that to the growers, though, and they laugh and roll their eyes. "We have plenty of weapons," they say. The reason that the 2015s, 2016s and 2017s are so good, so poised, so pure, is because 2003 taught them how to handle heat. Says Louis-Michel Liger-Belair, of Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair: "A vintage like 2017 20 years ago would have given us problems, and we wouldn't have been able to manage. But we play with different tools now. For example, the secondary clusters: we can decide to keep them or not. If we remove them we get shorter maturity. If we leave them on, we get longer maturity. We can have a higher or a lower canopy. We can do a late ploughing or not: it gives extra energy. We usually stop ploughing in late June or early July. But if we do another ploughing in mid-July it releases nitrogen in the soil which gives extra energy to the vines, which you might want in a dry year to keep the vines working until the grapes are ripe. Ripeness is done by the sap, not by concentration at the end, but if the vine stops working before the grapes are ripe you will just get concentration, and perhaps unripe tannins.

"Ripeness also comes from sun on the leaves, not sun on the grapes, so I am totally against removing leaves. You don't want direct sun on the grapes: you burn the acidity. Lack of acidity was the main problem in the past because of too much potassium in the soil, but we stopped that 30 years ago, and the soil is better balanced now.

"We look more at balance, and we can play with time to pick at the right moment. From our first picking to our last is probably three weeks now; it used to be less than one week."

Here's Nicolas Rossignol of the eponymous domaine, on winemaking: "We kept acidity in 2017 because although it was a hot summer there was freshness at the end of the day and the nights were cool. Nowadays, maybe because of the weather, the maturity of the grapes is different and we do a shorter maceration, a couple of weeks or three weeks, and just three or four punches, no more. We have thicker skins, and we want slow extraction. And we use less oak."

Between them these two growers sum up the differences in Burgundy now: more finesse, more transparency, more concentration, more ripeness, more delicacy; less extraction, less make-up. That goes for both reds and whites. It's a winning formula. The 2017 reds are fine and succulent, aromatic and pure, and for relatively early drinking. You could drink most of them right now, actually, though in a couple of years' time they'll probably close down for a bit; most Burgundy vintages do. The whites are delicious: salty, citrus and tense.

The other good news is that quantities are generous: 2016 was tiny, but there's no shortage of 2017s. The less good news is that prices are just as high as before and sometimes higher; and allocations are tending to be increased for Asian markets and decreased elsewhere. This is of course excellent news if you're reading this in Hong Kong.

So what should you buy? Those moving from New World Pinot to Burgundy will love the 2017's precision combined with ripeness, but might be horrified at the prices of the top wines. This is a good vintage to buy basic Bourgogne. Domaines Joseph Colin, Rémi Jobard, François Raquillet, de Courcel, AF Gros, Patrick Javillier, Marc Morey, Jean-Baptiste Boudier, Hubert Lamy, Pernot-Belicard, Arnaud Tessier, Ballot-Millot, Thibault Liger-Belair, Georges Noëllat are among the many excellent basic Bourgognes, red and white.

Those moving to Burgundy from Bordeaux are in search of precision, delicacy, and the complications of terroir and grower that offer the buyer so much more of a challenge than they do in Saint-Estèphe or Saint-Emilion. Those distinctions are clear and precise this year: and if you want delicacy, even Gevrey-Chambertin these days not longer has the dense chewiness that it used to. Concentration and weight, yes; but it's all handled much more gently.

For those on the verge of moving from Burgundy to other Pinots, chased off by price: well, there's not much comfort. The Côte Chalonnaise and Mâconnais have produced some beauties this year, punching well above their appellations, and prices here are reasonable; but in the end, if more and more of us want to drink Pinot Noir, and it seems that we do, then prices are only going to go one way.

If price is no object to you, and you want to get your paws on some grands crus, good luck. You'll need to be a longstanding customer of a suitable merchant to get the most desirable domaines and wines; and they allocate their already tiny quantities according to what you spent with them in the past. It's no good coming in fresh and waving a cheque book at them: what they say, tactfully, in these circumstances, is "that we will put together a package for you".

If they offer you this, say yes. And then start drinking. This is a vintage for pure pleasure.