Bowes Wine’s 2009 Burgundy Offering

Burgundy vines up top, some leafy, some not

In a stylistic sense, the 2009 Burgundy vintage is very much a game of two halves, halves separated - in many cases - by just a few days.

Visiting the region in October to taste the wines I met many wines that were forward to the point of being facile. Bottling was quite unnecessary. One could pull up a chair and enjoy them from the vat. Park off with some cheese and charcouterie and a good time would be guaranteed.

These wines are, of course, no good for Bowes Wine. We're on the hunt for fluids that are going to last and transmogrify in bottle into something several steps beyond mere fermented Pinot and Chardonnay juice. This sort of easy-going stuff might be ideal for restaurants (indeed, one can look forward to a great deal of easy drinking and delicious 2009 Burgundy on restaurant wine lists over the next few years) but anathema to our business. Thus I expressed some admiration and moved on.

Then, a flurry of domaine visits to addresses where the harvest had been undertaken a week-or-so earlier; on 7th September, perhaps, rather than 13th. And suddenly the quality potential swung into focus. Here was what I was seeking. I emitted an audible sigh of satisfaction, possibly of relief, too.

And that was it. Having harvested early in the second week of September, one was presented with wine that retained freshness, focus, purity and, yes, potential longevity. Leave it another week and what one was left with was good only for liqueur making: exaggerated simulacra of Burgundy wine.

Fortunately, I found a great many addresses where the 2009 harvest can be considered a real cause for celebration. These wines lack the angular, youthful austerity of the 2008s and have more drive and vim than the elegantly forward wines of 2007. The best of them are pure, ripely structured liquids that can be enjoyed in the medium term and, in the senior appellations, then kept into the long term. I like them very much and can wholeheartedly recommend them!

The wines can be viewed in one of two ways:

-          by producer, with each producer’s wines accompanied by their profile – click here

-          by commune, running north to south – click here