Time for a glass of champagne rather than Burgundy – in order to celebrate Burgundy! My book on the vineyards and vignerons of Burgundy, titled ‘Inside Burgundy’ – we resisted the temptation to go with ‘The Sex Life of Burgundy’, though it is certainly true that gaining an understanding of the human relationships among the vignerons can go far to explaining the style of their wines – has at long last gone to press.

 Here are the bare bones – 656 pages, commentary on 1,000 or so different vineyards from generic to grand cru, and from Chablis to Pouilly Fuissé. Thumbnails of 450 producers, vintage reports, and plenty of background to what makes Burgundy what it is. I am starting to get very excited indeed!

We shall be promoting the book from early September, with physical delivery expected in the second half of October. Watch this space!

We had a bit of a treat last week when we celebrated the 900th anniversary of the extraordinary vineyard called Clos Blanc de Vougeot. It is well known how the monks of Cîteaux, having established their new monastery in 1098, started to plant up what is now the Clos de Vougeot from 1110. Fewer people are aware that they singled out the vineyard next door, known as La Vigne Blanche or Clos Blanc de Vougeot, as being clearly a white wine site and planted accordingly. There are hardly any white vineyards in the Côte de Nuits, but this one has been in existence for nine centuries.

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Major storms in the Mâconnais and Beaujolais on Sunday 6th June have inconvenienced local growers, with torrents of rain bringing the topsoil down the hillside. There are unlikely to be any lasting problems, just extra work at one of the busiest times of the year. Otherwise the flowering has been taking place over the last few days, suggesting a vintage around 20th-25th September for most of Burgundy, with Chablis scarcely behind the Côte d’Or. It is cool and cloudy now – we definitely need a bit of sunshine and warmth.

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For the last several weeks I have been much more in Beaujolais mode than Burgundy, prospecting for suppliers to add to the range to take advantage both of the brilliance of 2009 in the region, and also what I perceive to be a renewed interest in the region from trade, press and consumers alike. Thank goodness, it is about time!

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I have just been down to Beaujolais and up to Chablis to check out the 2009s from these regions. The visit to Chablis was particularly reassuring because I had some worries that the sunny conditions of the 2009 vintage might have led to atypical Chablis, fat and sassy chardonnay without the underlying austerity which is the hallmark of the appellation. Not so, there is a lovely freshness alongside the weight of the wines.

The real revelation this year, though, is Beaujolais. It comes at a moment when the world seems keen to see a revival of this once iconic region. There is a renaissance in particular among the ‘crus’, with single vineyard sites coming to the fore. In 2009 almost all the wines seem absolutely lovely, from straight Beaujolais upwards, as long as the producer has not gone over to the dark side of artificial yeasts and thermovinification. There will be some gorgeous wines to drink this summer, and then a wave of more serious bottlings later in the year which could be fascinating if laid away for the medium to long term. I am clearing space for various Morgons and Moulin a Vents to put away in my own cellar.

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Spring has undoubtedly sprung in Burgundy. Only a week ago we were still getting -10 degree nights and occasional snow flurries. Now the sun feels warm on one’s back and the grass is turning green again (as you can see from this picture of our garden). The tardiest vignerons are just finishing off their pruning.
 
And there is a spring in my step because I have just emailed off the last complete chapter of my forthcoming Burgundy book. There is still lots of tidying up work to be done, then page proofs and so on, so publication is not yet imminent. Further updates later as work progresses, but this feels like a great step forward. A small glass of Aligote is definitely in order!

Last week we had the opportunity to sample a range of 1990s in Berrys’ Long Room (left), which confirmed the reputation of the vintage. Enhanced it even! The evening was mostly about Burgundy, albeit sandwiched between some white Bordeaux wines, Domaine de Chevalier and Laville Haut-Brion at the front and a youthful Yquem to complete the evening.

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While Jasper was in town last week we managed to grab a few minutes with him to talk about his thoughts on the ‘08 Burgundy en primeur campaign in Asia:

After a fantastic few days with Jasper in town, Nick Pegna, Managing Director of BB&R HK (and my boss!), gives his thoughts on the events that took place.

“We have just dispatched Jasper Morris MW, our Burgundy Buyer, back to his home in the Côtes of Burgundy, having completed our second Burgundy Week in Hong Kong. The week, which consists of master classes, interviews, dinners and tastings included the first tasting in Hong Kong of the 2008 Burgundies en primeur (and perhaps the first Burgundy primeurs tastings in Asia – left) as well as a thoughtful and thoroughly enjoyable look at the 1996 vintage of Domaine de la Romanee Conti, at a dinner organised in conjunction with American Express for 15 people last Friday night.

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On Wednesday we held our annual Burgundy en primeur tasting, where Jasper and his producers got the chance to show off their 2008s to the eagerly awaiting public (and press!)
 
In between pouring and note-taking, we managed to catch a few words with Jasper and Benjamin Leroux, to talk about 2008 as a vintage:
 

We also managed to catch eRobert Parker’s  Neal Martin on his way out to see what his thoughts were after having tasted the best part of 109 perky barrel samples:
 

See the full list of Berrys’ Burgundy en primeur wines

I find this time of year the toughest by far… Burgundy En-Primeur. It is a living hell, where I am waking up in cold sweats and arguing with my colleagues. No this is not a complaint about how busy I am but the problem all Burgundy ‘nuts’ have…what on earth do I buy this vintage?!

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Despite the title, we haven’t entirely given up wine for the New Year. Wine Matters has, however, just finished Guardian wine writer Victoria Moore’s new book ‘How To Drink’ and what an interesting read it was too. One of the highlights, of course, was a mention of our very own Jasper Morris MW who, as well as being a wine connoisseur (and our Burgundian buyer) is also something of a tea aficionado. Here’s a snippet from the book:

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Phew! I have been flat out working on our 2008 Burgundy Offer which opens on January 5th, so have had no time to blog, tweet, twitter or scratch my nose for the past few weeks. All is done now so normal life can resume. The 2008s were not easy to taste earlier in the year because the malolactic fermentations were late, and you can’t make sense of a wine until that is done and dusted and the wines have had a chance to settle down again afterwards – which by late November they had.

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Here in Basingstoke we are lucky enough to receive a host of prominent visitors and today was the turn of the amiable Nicolas Potel, who came to talk to us about his wines (some from Maison Potel - mainly the ’06s, and lots of ’07s from his private venture, Domaine Potel), as well as the changes that have occurred in his business over the recent months.  He took a bit of time out from showing his wines and answering staff’s questions to shoot this short video explaining what he’s been up to:
 

 
You can read a bit more about Nicolas in this article in the most recent Wine Spectator.

It has been a remarkably fine and easy to manage harvest in Burgundy.

The sun is still shining and the grapes are in. It wasn’t a doddle all summer long, mind you, as tricky weather conditions in the first half of July required careful management in the vineyard. But August was a perfect summer month, with day after day of warm sunny weather, without any exaggerated heat spikes, and though September was cooler and a little greyer, the rains held off and the crop was brought in.

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Spending so much of my time in Burgundy has many, many advantages, not least the beautiful scenery, the relaxed way of life and my (wife’s) horse, Hengist. But it does mean that I miss out on technological developments somewhat. As a result, I have only just discovered ‘Twittering’ and have been debuting my tweets (@justjasper) during the recent harvest here in Burgundy.

In doing this I was also reminded that I had taken some videos of producers and vineyards in May and found it fascinating to compare their predictions on the vintage to the harvest we’ve just had – some were spot on! Here is a video of me talking to Etienne de Montille at Ch. de Puligny, but there are plenty more on our YouTube channel, including one of the vineyard at Montrachet and a brief look at the old wine press at Maison Drouhin.

As I looked out of my window yesterday morning, everything seemed perfect – as expected it was one of the hottest days of the year at around 35c and, so far, August has been absolutely delightful. There was enough rainfall early in the year to keep the water table up and avoid the risk of drought, but another shower or two before the end of the month would be handy – otherwise the grapes will have very thick skins and not much juice.

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The wine industry is waiting to see what will come of the ongoing disagreements between the BIVB (Burgundy’s representative generic body) and the Syndicat des Bourgognes (as reported by Jancis Robinson and Decanter).

I have for years been campaigning for the anomaly, by which the Beaujolais crus can be declassified into Bourgogne Rouge, to be suppressed. There is a commercial history behind it, but surely it flies in the face of what terroir is about, which is matching grape varieties to locations. There is nothing in common between two wines labelled as Bourgogne Rouge, one grown on acid soils and made with Gamay, the other on alkaline soils made with Pinot.

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I have just been taking a small group of customers round Burgundy on one of our scheduled trips and, as you might imagine, we tried out a few of the area’s better restaurants as well as tasting wines and walking the vineyards. Here’s an update on some of them:

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It looks as if 2009 will be an early harvest in Burgundy. The flowering has just taken place in very good sunny conditions during the last week in May, which suggests that the grapes should be ripe around 10th September. Too early to be sure of anything yet, of course, but the year has started well except for the occasional hailstorm. Clos de la Roche and surrounding vineyards took a hit on 21st May.