(Dijon) Burgundy wines are heading towards a “beautiful and generous” or even “grand” 2022 vintage, with the vines having withstood the drought well, winegrowers are delighted as the harvest begins in the region.
Posted at 10:04 a.m.
“We are very, very pleasantly surprised”: Thiébault Huber, president of the Confederation of Associations and Winegrowers of Burgundy (CAVB) had “a lot of concern about yields” when he started the harvest on Saturday at his Huber estate. -Verdereau of 10 hectares, on the prestigious appellations of Volnay and Pommard (Côte d’Or).
“But in fact, we have a good performance. We have a great vintage,” he told AFP. The vines certainly suffered from the summer drought, but “the 100 mm of water in June were life-saving”, explained Mr. Huber.
“We are heading towards a fine and generous vintage”, confirms François Labet, president of the Bureau interprofessionnel des vins de Bourgogne (BIVB). “We had a season without disease, frost or hail, except in rare sectors: we returned to normal yields”, welcomes the winegrower who began the harvest on Thursday on the 5.5 hectares of his Château de la Tower, Clos Vougeot estate (Côte d’Or).
“We will be happy to put wine in the cellar, because stocks are low”, welcomes Mr. Huber, after the millesimus horribilis of 2020, where frost, disease and hail had cut the harvest by half on average. .
“This year, the quality is there, with pretty grapes, without rot”, a recurring wound in Burgundy viticulture, explains Marc Sangoy, president of the Cave de Lugny (Saône-et-Loire), leading producer of wines from Burgundy with 1180 ha.
“We breathe a big sigh of relief compared to a year that promised to be difficult”, also rejoices Christophe Suchaut, vine and wine expert at the Chamber of Agriculture of Côte d’Or. “The June rains prevented the disaster,” he explains.
The drought that followed simply slowed down the ripening, pushing back the date of the harvest: the latter is therefore very early, but without breaking the 2020 record when the first pruning shears were given on August 13, breaking the record. of 1556.
According to a study carried out by Thomas Labbé, historian at the University of Burgundy (Dijon), the average date of the harvest in the Côtes de Beaune, Burgundy’s flagship wine region, had remained relatively constant (as of September 28) for six centuries (from 1354 to 1987), before advancing to September 5 in just twenty years (1988 to 2018).