experience, they are at pains to point out. And it’s true, the wines are so beautifully made—and these days so finely textured from the word go—that they will indeed reward an early broaching. But if you can afford to wait those few more years, I would suggest the rewards will increase exponentially, in terms of bouquet especially—and those, when fully developed, are so myriad, subtle, and seductive—but also in terms of overall ease, harmony, and polish, a reminder that one of the defining aspects of fine wine is the ability to age and improve with grace and dividend. Gratification delayed, gratification doubled? And as I have also said before, it’s a sort of “When are you, were you, will you be perfectly developed?” question. Answer me that! Wines have different stories to tell at different moments in time. As do we. My prejudices aired, for me one of the most eye-opening takeaways from a remarkable recent DRC dinner (see pp.136–41), with six wines (ranging from 2019 back to 2005), was just how rewarding these wines can be in their relative youth. It is also, of course, very much a question of taste, not to mention availability. Start pulling those corks?


The growing season The key to both the quantity and the quality of 2022 was the amount of rain and, in particular, the moments in the viticultural year when it arrived. It was warm in April and May, and flowering was early and rapid, with no coulure or millerandage—simply the indication of a large, early harvest. June was hot, there were heatwaves in July and August. But there had been plentiful rain in December, topping up the water table; there was benign rain in the middle of flowering; there was particularly beneficial heavy rain during the third week of June, as there was again August 15–18. All perfect slaking junctures.


It is a year that—in style, quality, and quantity— is simply swimming in superlatives, where it is difficult to overstate the quality of the wines and just as impossible to avoid extravagant language


And then the fine weather continued up to, and throughout, the harvest, at which point both vines and fruit were in magnificent health, absolutely disease-free.


Corney & Barrow’s managing


director Adam Brett-Smith noted, “Throughout the growing season and even after the harvest, the leaf canopy remained resolutely green.” Aubert de Villaine, retired director of the Domaine, made almost exactly the same comments on the September vineyards in 2015: “Going through the vineyards in September, I was struck by their beauty and by the perfect health of the vines, their leaves, their fruit. Any potentially stressful dry periods during the year were immediately counterbalanced by brief, relieving periods of rain.” And he called the 2015s “a once-in-a-generation vintage.” Could he have even envisaged the proportions, the scope, the stature of 2022 within the next decade? Let alone 2019 or 2018. Whither next?


Vintage style and quality As in Bordeaux, so, too, in Burgundy, the years since 2015 have been remarkable for their consistent high quality. Since


THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 87 | 2025 | 55


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