2014 White Burgundy

The week had started well, when our Norwegian friend Andre opened a 2012 Chave Hermitage that was not oxidised, (after a series of bottles and vintages that were). It’s a deep yellow wine of the south, built on sunshine not acidity and to be honest not really to my taste. Impressively structured and rich, but just a bit too much so. But it does sadly prove that it’s not just Burgundy which suffers from premature oxidation even if the press seems not to realise (or publicise) this.

Ironically my first brush with the 2014 vintage was at Domaine Sauzet. We’d opened a succession of oxidised wines (I think 2004 Puligny Montrachet 1e Cru les Combettes no less) and I was so fed up that I wrote to them to remonstrate. They said they could not replace the bottles, but that they could invite us to the domain for a tasting and discussion. So we tasted through the then infant but very promising 2014s with winemaker Benoit Riffault. The wines were fabulous and the explanations about oxidation the most honest and thoughtful I’d heard. They were doing everything they could to combat the problem of which nobody knew the exact cause, but free sulphur levels were raised, corks changed and new longer bottle necks used to give a tighter fit.

A decade later and it’s time to see whether it worked and just how the vintage is looking overall. In these days of ever more sunny conditions (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022), 2014 stands apart and is generally rated the best since 2010, wines of fruit concentration yes, but held in by taught acidity and backed by considerable extract, that lovely chalky feeling that grips your teeth. A five start vintage for whites.

But is it? For us it started badly with three 1e cru Chassagne Montrachet’s from Niellon, all of which looked more like Hermitage than youngish top Burgundy and all of which went straight into the risotto. Dull, flabby, fruitless and oxidised. One, two, three. Ouch, and at today’s ever more elevated prices, scandalous.

As the heatwave forced temperatures to a life-sapping 40 degrees, any suggestion of vin rouge was simply impossible. You couldn’t go outside during the afternoon, and you couldn’t even eat al fresco at eight o’clock in the evening. Whites were going to have to carry the day (days).

We started with two wines from St Aubin star Hubert Lamy. He lifted his prices dramatically with the low yield 2021 vintage, so the value proposition these days is not at all so obvious (probably better from the likes of Marc Colin, whose son Pierre-Yves is another superstar but alas also with consequent levels of pricing). But if a generation ago St Aubin was classed as an ‘also ran’, now it’s definitely alongside the big league. After all, En Remilly sits just upslope of and around the corner from Le Montrachet and you are just above Puligny and across from Chassagne, not such a bad location as the mercury rises inexorably.

What is certain is that Lamy makes fabulous wines in a restrained modern style – reductive but with only a whiff of struck match, not an all-dominant takeover as with so many. Indeed, I often wonder if a lot of newer tasters realise that the matchstick/gunflint/popcorn/sesame taste that they all rave about is purely from reductive winemaking, not the grape or the terroir.  Style has just as much to say as ‘terroir’ as very well evidenced here.

Anyway, the two wines were very similar: gently reductive, green fruited, lovely acidity and good mineral extract. Balance, flavour and class. Perhaps the Chateniere just a bit tighter and younger than the Derriere Chez Edouard.

Moving across and down the road to the star of Chassagne, Ramonet’s Morgeot 1e Cru 2014 was more yellow than green and in a very different style. I find Ramonet sometimes brilliant but sometimes picked a little late for my personal taste. This had buckets of impressive and complex fruit but was very rich (back to that Hermitage!), and though there was acidity and extract, it tasted almost sweet. Undoubtedly a fine wine (my wife loved it), but one for those who enjoy richness.

To finish, a pair of Sauzets, happily again with no hint of oxidation, but like the Ramonet showing no reduction and the same minty-licorice fruit but without the yellow fruited richness and very ripe core. A wine of purity with cool tension and tooth gripping texture. Again, the two 1e crus were very similar, perhaps the Perrieres a little bit more taught and the Champs Canet a touch bigger.

Five wines all of top class from 2014, showing three different wine styles and a multiplicity of climats from three of the top villages in the Cote de Beaune. Lamy with reduction, Lamy and Sauzet based on elegance, Ramonet more on opulence, all three with layers of extract.

When it’s not oxidised, 2014 white Burgundy is a delight.

Postscript - ‘The Wine in My Glass’

In the autumn of 2025, I am publishing a book about my travels in the wine world, people, places and, of course, wines.  I am not a professional, so everything I say is objective and unbiased (so I can criticise when other journalists do not dare to do so for instance) and any profits will go to the Vendanges Solidaires association which was set up in 2016 to help winemakers who are in trouble after suffering the extreme weather conditions (frost, hail etc) which sadly are becoming ever more frequent: www.vendangessolidaires.com.

The book ranges from California to Sicily, via Salta, Jujuy and Patagonia in Argentina, Valtellina, Piemonte and Tuscany in Italy, Madeira and of course all over France (Burgundy, Chablis, Sancerre, Beaujolais, Bordeaux, the Rhone).

If you have found any pleasure and/or interest in this blog, I think you might enjoy it, especially as it has been brilliantly illustrated by Arabella Langlands-Perry who managed to juggle bringing up two young kids, helping run Maceo/Willi’s Wine Bar in Paris and producing artwork with an abundance of both talent and wit. Brava.

‘The Wine in My Glass – Tales of Wines, Winemakers and Places’

Published by The Medlar Press Limited, Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, autumn 2025. www.medlarpress.com

https://medlarpress.com/bookstore/?store-page=The-Wine-in-My-Glass-p768838784

Will be available from Medlar, in France and/or from me. Price UK Pounds 26 or 30 Euros.