Gevrey Chambertin Corbeaux, Domaine Lucien Boillot 2021

You can count on Pierre Boillot to come up with a pithy one-liner to sum up the vintage – this year’s heading our vintage report, underlining that the expression of terroir is what Burgundy is all about. 2021’s harvest, for him, started on 25th September, a full month later than in 2020, whilst 2022 was back to being almost a month earlier. Pierre commented that nature works in strange ways – the small yield in 2021 was a blessing as, had the vines had more fruit on them, the bunches wouldn’t have been able to ripen fully. As it was, and confounding many expectations, the grapes did ripen fully and the tannins, the canary in the mine, were ripe and supple, not green. In the Côte de Beaune, Pierre’s vines were hit hard – some 40% of his Puligny went to frost alone, before the challenging growing season had really begun – and his Volnay premiers crus were reduced to one and three barrels each; a barrel is a scant 300 bottles. Gevrey fared better with a decent, if not huge, harvest.