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Every year we have the opportunity to taste the wines of Burgundy before they are released into the UK market, and sometimes even, before they have been bottled (en primeur).
This is the best way to buy Burgundy, with many wines selling out before they have even landed in the country, and for all wines, this is the best price you can get.
Below is Travis and James’ selection of their favourite wines from the awesome 2022 vintage, plus some information on how En Primeur works and how you can secure your order.
Following the difficult vintage of 2021, when spring frost had a huge impact on the volume of wine made across burgundy, 2022 was looked on with a lot of hope and expectation. The good news is that the weather delivered and overall, it was a warm and dry vintage, without the damaging frosts of the year before. There was also enough rain over the summer months to give the thirsty vines a welcome watering and help avoid heat stress.
The result was a plentiful harvest and thankful vignerons everywhere. The interesting thing is that while the weather throughout the growing season suggested a blockbuster vintage of big, bold wines, the reality is more one of restraint and balance - with fruit that was beautifully ripe but not too ripe.
Many domaines opted to harvest early and the last week of August must’ve been a whirlwind of activity with pickers everywhere! This helped preserve freshness and acidity while having enough phenolic ripeness and concentration to suggest some excellent aging potential.
Overall, the conditions and yields appear to have given the domaines more freedom to make winemaking and stylistic choices compared to 2021, which was very much a vintage of necessity.
We were really impressed with the wines we tried at January’s tastings and we’ve got a fantastic selection to offer you for this year’s En Primeur. The whites are elegant and structured, the reds surprisingly fresh but with a wonderful depth to them.
Overall, a theme of both colours is wines that are both really enjoyable now and also showing great potential for cellaring - we can’t wait for you to try them!
Whites
Saint-Véran, Saumaize Michelin - £26.17
Reds
Lettre d’Eloise, Bertrand Ambroise - £21.60
"Juicy cherry fruit, black plum and an earthy finish."
Bourgogne Cote D’Or, Jean Guiton - £26.04
"The lighter style of this Pinot allows the perfumed nose to sing."
Volnay “Les Petits Poisots”, Jean Guiton - £54.28
"The delicacy of Jean Guiton’s winemaking allows the aromatics to explode out of the glass."
Bourgogne Rouge, Domaine Marc Roy - £46.34
"Unbelievable purity of lush red fruits with a nice spicy finish."
Gevrey Chambertin Vieilles Vignes, Domaine Marc Roy - £89.56
"The Marc Roy wines are always sleek and effortless, bold and rich.. and this is no exception."
Rully Rouge Chaponnieres, Domaine P&M Jacqueson - £29.28
"A wine that balances effortless enjoyment with a sneaky seriousness and building complexity."
Côte de Nuits Villages, Bertrand Ambroise - £35.31
"Jumps out of the glass with aromas of ripe and dried cherry, plum, and the characteristic Côte de Nuits spice"
Marsannay “Grasses Tetes”, Domaine Coillot - £44.31
"You will be hard pressed to find a more complete and complex Pinot at the price from anywhere in Burgundy."
Gevrey Chambertin, Domaine Coillot - £59.27
"The wine has a lovely array of flavours, leading with wild cherry and leading all the way to an almost Syrah-esque depth of flavour"
Marsannay, Domaine Sylvaine Pataille - £39.80
"This wine shows Pataille’s signature style of elegant, fruit-lead Pinot Noir."
Nuits-Saint-Georges “La Charmotte”, Domaine Gavignet - £48.00
"This wine leads from bright floral raspberry into rich black bramble fruits, and then layers of spice."
Nuits-Saint-Georges “Aux Thorey” Premier Cru, Domaine Gavignet - £64.63
"Nuits-Saint-Georges always tends towards the darker-fruited, more brooding end of the Pinot Noir spectrum and the wines of Gavignet are no exception."
Nuits-Saint-Georges, Henri Gouges - £65.91
"The wines of Henri Gouges are famously long-lived and impressive and exemplify the quality and potential in the region."
Chassagne-Montrachet Rouge, Domaine Coffinet-Duvernay - £37.67
"This was my favourite Chassagne-Montrachet Rouge of the tastings this year."
Morey-Saint-Denis “En Rue de Vergy”, Domaine Felettig - £60.58
"This wine proved unputdownable, with a deep and quite savoury palate."
Gevrey Chambertin “En Champs”, Philippe Livera - £64.63
"The wine is solidly built, with big tannins and a structure that will inevitably unfurl as the wine ages."
Gevery Chambertin “Clos Village”, Philippe Livera - £67.95
"I would suggest that this the primary candidate for long cellaring of our Gevrey Chambertin picks this year."
En Primeur is kind of like a wine futures market. It is a way to buy wine before it has been released into the market - quite often, before the wines have even been bottled.
The first (and most boring) reason is that this is the cheapest way, by far, to get hold of these wines. Once they have been imported into the country and word gets out, prices will shoot up. We will always offer a discount to our customers buying En Primeur with us.
The second reason is that many of these wines will not be available later in the year. Even in a plentiful vintage, such as 2022, the best wines (and the best value wines) will all be purchased before release. That means that if you want them, you have to lock them up early. Burgundy is the bestselling wine region in our wine shop, and a wildly popular fine wine region around the world.
At Beckford Bottle Shop Travis and James have been in London tasting as many of the yet to be released wines as possible (it’s a hard life). They have rubbed shoulders with those that control the flow of Burgundy and have managed to score cases from some of the most sought-after winemakers.
They also have put their heads together and written descriptions of all the wines, allowing you to investigate this year’s Burgundy haul for yourself.
There might not be enough wine for everyone who orders from us to have every bottle that they choose. The Burgundy order that you will place with us here is more of a "wish list". As soon as we close our En Primeur offer we will be in touch to confirm availability of all wines. We will try to distribute the most sought-after wines in as fair a way as possible.
You can browse the En Primeur wines on this page and add your chosen wines to your cart. Then simply go through the online checkout process as normal - there'll be nothing to pay at this point, but it will submit your order to us. Once we have arranged allocations, we will ask for a deposit of 20% of the value of your order.
The rest will be charged at the point that the wines arrive, which should be any time between May and October this year.
Most wine will arrive between May and October this year, and we will be happy to arrange deliveries of the wine, once it has arrived. It is worth bearing in mind that a few producers held their wine back this year (from the 2021 vintage) and as such some wine was not made available until January this year.
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