2022 Bourgogne Rouge, Domaine de Montille

The 2022 Bourgogne Rouge has a pretty nose with dark berry fruit and a touch of cola, the one-third whole clusters lending black pepper notes. The palate is medium-bodied with sappy black fruit, maybe a bit “serious” for a Bourgogne Rouge, and it needs a little more length on the finish. Fine.

“We had an uneventful 2022,” head winemaker Brian Sieve explains in their barrel cellar in Meursault. “We didn’t have any employee or tractor problems. The “noise” you have during a vintage didn’t happen. The biggest problem was finding good wood to prune after the frosts in 2021, which was early in the season. We had quite a bit of rain in June to sustain us through the dry periods, especially on the limestone soils. The Côte de Nuits, particularly Clos de Vougeot, seem to get more rain than the Côte de Beaune, 40mm there compared to 10mm down here. I believe the anti-hail canons in the Côte de Beaune ‘push’ the storms northwards. Marsannay and Gevrey get heaps of rain. You get more stress on more calcareous soils that are porous but free-draining. We had no heatwave or ‘canicule’ when the vines shut down. It was a warm season, but the stats are skewed because of the hot temperatures in February and March. It wasn’t like 2018 when maturity was advanced and progressing very fast. 

In 2022, the maturity came slower. We started with the kosher wines on August 26 and finished around September 8. We cropped at around 45hL/ha for the reds. The whole cluster percentages were based on whether it fitted into the vats. The wines underwent one extraction per day, pigeage rather than pumping over, which is just done at the beginning, whereas in his day, Hubert de Montille was doing three or four. Extraction happens by itself more than it used to. We found that we had very high-quality lees in 2022.”

Drink 2024 - 2027

One third whole cluster. Fine bright purple. I love the bouquet here, fully ripe but clean and delicious. Perfectly balanced, good acidity, medium but fine-grained tannins. Pretty and floral finish.

Drink 2025 - 2029