The Estate
2021: a challenging vintage, Burgundian!
“A particularly tiring vintage”.
The harvest was later at Domaine d’Ardhuy than in recent vintages, including 2019 and 2020, two very sunny vintages.
The harvest began on September 21 on our, historically precocious, red Savigny-lès-Beaune Premier Cru plot “Les Peuillets”and ended on Thursday, September 30 at Clos des Langres, our emblematic Monopole.
A vintage marked by two major events.
The frost of the nights of April 6 to 8 particularly weakened our vines located on the hillsides, including those on the sublime Colline de Corton where we exploit nearly 5.38 ha.
The season was then rather wet, with rainfall accumulations certainly in the average of the last years, but with a distribution during the campaign which maintained a high level of pressure of the cryptogamic diseases of the vine, namely the mildew and the oidium, particularly virulent this year.
The effects of this pressure were even more damaging on some vines already very weakened by the frost.
Some plots were therefore harvested with very low yields, sometimes less than 10 hL/ha on the slopes, typically on our Grand Crus, but also with more satisfactory yields on the lower slopes, around 30 hL/ha.
On average the yield at Domaine d’Ardhuy should be around 23 hL/ha, with an average for the whites around 19 hL/ha and 26 hL/ha for the reds, but here again with strong disparities.
These particularly trying vintage conditions for the plant led us to choose the harvest date guided in certain situations by the sanitary state of the grapes.
If the situations are sometimes contrasted, we nevertheless succeeded in bringing in grapes with good maturity, with natural alcohol levels around 12.5% vol. on average, and very satisfactory levels of perceived acidity, in particular for the whites.
An important work of sorting was carried out by our teams at the reception of the grapes in order to remove up to sometimes nearly 10% of the least qualitative grapes.
A first portrait
If it is still too early to draw an accurate picture of what the 2021 vintage will look like, we can already draw a basic landscape:
- The first vatted reds show profiles focused on fruit and freshness, with relatively modest tannic structures that suggest that after the concentrated, dense and deep 2019 and 2020, we will find a softer, more elegant 2021 vintage draped in ruby colors.
- The whites, particularly rare in 2021, have surprisingly good acidity and should prove denser than the reds.
Our teams are actively working in our cellars to reveal the full potential of this demanding 2021 vintage, which will delight Burgundy lovers. The long period of maturation that will follow in our historical cellars at Clos des Langres will patiently continue this metamorphosis, for our and your greatest pleasure!