2004

Whites

2004 was a difficult year for Chardonnay with notable performance irregularities. The vintage’s considerable virtues are best displayed by Chassagne-Montrachet and Saint-Aubin at the southern end of the Côte de Beaune: sharply-focused, aromatic medium-bodied wines with wonderfully precise flavours for drinking over the next five years. But its vices - dilution, underripeness and disease – mark plenty of cuvées from north to south.

A mixed bag of spring weather, culminating in a dull, wet July and sunless, stormy August provided ideal conditions for powdery mildew, a fungus affecting Chardonnay more than Pinot Noir. Attacks outstripped in severity even those of 1998, the previous high point for this disease in the last thirty years. Between the large, often unregulated crop load (an inevitable natural backlash after 2003), the atrocious summer weather and the virulence of disease it is hard to allocate precise responsibility for Chardonnay’s ripening difficulties. But for growers who did not drop crop there was simply not enough good weather to get the job done.

Summer hail storms, worst in the southern Mâconnais, brought further challenges. The bans de vendanges were fixed for 18th September in the Mâconnais, the 22nd on the Côte de Beaune and the 29th in Chablis where growers scrambled to complete harvesting before the onset of heavy rain.

Given the above, the vintage is clearly for short-tomedium term drinking, with village AOCs already showing well and more senior wines accessible from 2009. Chablis perfectly embodies the quality spread of the year from high-energy, subtle grands crus two years away from being ready to large amounts of bland, unambitious wine already past their best. Particular highlights, nonetheless, in this complicated year, were the northern Mâconnais, spared most of the misfortunes which befell other growing zones, and Sauvignon Blanc in the Yonne which goes to market as Saint-Bris. The Sauvignon grape thrives in cloudy, northern-type weather – as New Zealand discovered long ago – and bounced back to top form after the distinctly unfriendly conditions of 2003.

Reds

The big surprise of the vintage was how many good to very good Côte d’Or and Chalonnais red wines emerged from a year with such indifferent, occasionally catastrophic, weather. The worst climate problems were south of Beaune. Once again, Volnay, Pommard and the southern Beaune vineyards were penalised, with widespread summer hail damage. Getting clean grapes into the fermenter was a huge challenge with state of the art sorting tables and cripplingly high crop discard rates a prerequisite for success. Disruption to the ripening cycle also posed further problems for winemakers who had to correct top-heavy musts with sugars registering up to 15% potential alcohol. That anything good at all came out of this area is testimony to some very smart cellar work.

Elsewhere, however, and particularly on the Côte de Nuits, growers found themselves with better than expected raw materials and the chance to produce powerfully fruity red wines. Two factors made this possible. First, growers were ready for the above average crop size – nature’s over compensation after the miserly yields of heatwave-afflicted 2003 – and moved swiftly to thin bunches in the summer. Ultimately, 2004 Côte d’Or Pinot Noir harvest volumes were 1.5% below the region’s 5-year rolling average whereas Chardonnay produced 15% more – a sure sign of extra viticultural diligence by red winemakers. Second, after an atrocious July and August, the weather was bone-dry, hot and sunny in the three-week run-up to harvest. Because yields had been trimmed, what good weather there was sufficed to bring balanced ripeness, with grapes showing 12%-13.5% potential alcohol, smooth extractible tannins and good acidity. Several Côte de Nuits growers described the vintage as combining the punch of 1996 with the smooth texture of 2000. As confirmed by the Pinot Noir ban de vendange – on 20th September, two days ahead of the date for the usually more precocious Chardonnay – 2004 handed a decisive advantage to red wines.

Expect red village Côte d’Or AOCs to drink from 2008. Most senior red wines should be at or near their peak by 2012. Wines from hail-affected areas will be best in their fruity youth. The Beaujolais, picking from 10th September, did not get the full value of the fine weather but where genuine ripeness was achieved the results are good.