Two thousand nine, the first “vintage of the century” in France since 2005, is yet another year in which the early hype has motivated producers to raise prices and has quickly overshadowed some very good wines from the previous vintage—in this case, 2008. Of course, weak economies and sluggish sales of over-$25 wine will put a damper on sales in major wine-drinking markets like the U.S. and U.K. But it’s still a good bet that credulous consumers will overpay for 2009s, while leaving much cheaper—and often more classic, more interesting and more refreshing—2008s (and 2007s) moldering on the shelves.
From virtually the last days of August, the French press was already anointing 2009 the greatest vintage in decades in Beaujolais, and producers in the Southern Rhône were already trumpeting their success. Barely a week later, growers in Burgundy’s Côte d’Or were bringing in some of their richest chardonnay and, especially, pinot fruit ever. When the weather held through the end of September and into early October, even the cabernet sauvignon in the Médoc region of Bordeaux looked to be spectacularly successful. The hype machine quickly shifted into high gear.
Nine months later, as the wines from this mostly generous harvest are taking form, insiders are developing a more nuanced view of 2009. It’s looking more and more as if many of the highlights of the year will be provided by the normally late-ripening red varieties, which were less affected by heat in August and early September and were able to attain full ripeness and sweet, velvety tannins during more moderate but mostly dry weather in September. Less successful were earlier maturing red grapes that were affected by drought stress in August, as well as those whose sugars skyrocketed during hotter weather and had to be picked quickly during the first half of September for fear that alcohol levels were going through the roof and acidity levels were plunging.
And of course a very warm summer and low natural acidity levels in the grapes is not generally the best formula for making soil-driven, sharply delineated dry white wines with serious aging potential. For example, some top American importers of Loire Valley wines were not yet convinced that the conditions of 2009 were conducive to making white wines with staying power.
During my recent in-depth tastings of white Burgundy, including Chablis, I found some classic young white wines from the 2009 vintage but a large number of examples whose rich, showy fruit, high alcohol and low acidity suggest that they will be best for early drinking. Many of these wines express fully ripe chardonnay fruit qualities more than they do the distinctive minerality and soil tones of the region’s favored vineyards. And in too many of them, the ineffable high notes of flowers, minerals and peppery herbs that few New World chardonnays can offer have largely been burned off by the heat of the summer.
These user-friendly, very rich and immediately appealing wines will no doubt make new friends for Burgundy, but fans of wines that clearly demonstrate their distinctive terroirs may be better served by buying, and cellaring, the 2008s, the products of a mediocre summer and a later and more leisurely harvest that benefited dramatically from the concentrating effect of a dry north wind that blew through much of September. Both 2008 and 2007 yielded wines with brighter acidity and more obvious minerality than 2009.
The 2007s are generally clean, lean and penetrating—if not downright austere—wines for the purist, while the 2008s offer more density and sweetness of fruit without loss of soil character. The latter vintage brought variable quality on the Côte de Beaune as many growers had to carefully eliminate fruit affected by rot, but growers in Chablis have a rich yet classic vintage in the making. With less rain during the summer, rot was far less of an issue in Chablis and the fruit was generally cleaner.
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