The 2022 Burgundy vintage has great promise and we are excited to begin our en primeur offers with the top wines from our friends at Maison Louis Jadot.  We tasted their `22s in London last week, a wonderful introduction to a vintage which looks excellent for both reds and whites, with good volumes to boot. 

Jadot makes over 100 wines from their extraordinary vineyard holdings across the Côte d'Or.  Their cathedral-like circular winery in Beaune (pictured above) may be large by Burgundy standards, but many of their wines are made in tiny quantities, far from enough to fill a single one of those wooden fermenters.  The vinification for each wine is remarkably consistent, so the main differences we taste are from terroir.  Tasting Jadot's range gives a remarkable overview of the vintage. The 2022s are undoubtedly very high in quality and have a delicious immediacy, making them a joy to taste.  This offer focuses on their top releases of the most sought-after wines.  

The 2022 Growing Season

  As we wrote in our introduction to the vintage, 2022 was one of the hottest and driest ever seen in Burgundy, yet the vines were able to rise to the challenge, coping with the heat in a way which suggests they are adapting to climate change.  Jadot's winemaker Frédéric Barnier says this adaptation "represents for me the hope what Burgundy will be able to demonstrate in the future".

The growing season got off to a great start.  After a mild, dry winter, the first green shoots emerged in April 2022, just in time to meet a burst of cold air from the north, bringing threat of frost from 3-11 April.  Happily, at this stage in their development, the buds are covered in fine cotton-like hairs, protecting them from the worst of the frosts. 

Spring-like weather arrived in mid-April, resulting in rapid vegetative growth and the first flowers just a month later.  Flowering was two weeks earlier than usual.  Budburst was followed by exceptionally warm weather.  Rain came at just the right time before fruit set and the berries developed in hot, sunny weather. Thunderstorms from 21-25 June, brought more much-needed water, although a few hailstorms did cause damage in some areas.

After such a propitious start, an excellent harvest seemed likely, but a series of heatwaves and no rain threatened to change the course of the vintage.  In contrast to 2021, there was no threat of mildew or any other maladies of the vine, but the lack of water became increasingly critical.  In mid-August, chardonnay vines in areas went into physiological shutdown, closing up the stomata in their leaves to conserve water.  The berries shrivelled to a very small size.  Vines in shallow or sandy soils suffered the worst.  Acidity levels were a concern, but it became clear after the vintage that the total acidity in each berry had been preserved as the water content fell, resulting in a final pH not too far off an average year. Rain came in late August, rehydrating the vines and setting the scene for an excellent harvest.

Picking for the Chardonnay vines on the Côte de Beaune started on 20 August, with the rest of the region following on behind.  The last grapes were gathered on the Côte de Nuits, the Hautes Côtes, and in Chablis during the third week in September, an unusually long, slow harvest.  Some areas ripened at a different rate than others, but the grapes were in excellent health.

The precision and purity in Jadot's wines are beautiful to experience and for us, they capture the essence of the Côte d'Or's greatness.  It's an amazing experience to taste the different terroirs side-by-side, and with more wines than ever now available in cases of three bottles, we recommend adding many different cuvées to your cellar as possible. 

Preference will be given to buyers of the wines in previous vintages. Please let us know as soon as possible if you would like an allocation.   With a larger harvest in 2022, we encourage enquiries from new buyers, as we hope to have additional allocations of sought-after wines to offer.

Offered en primeur and on allocation.  Due to land in the UK in December 2024.