The March 2026 issue of Burgundy-Report, including 50 Reports:
– The 2024 wines of Chablis Part 3
– The (mainly) 2024 wines from Mâcon Part 1
– A Few domaines from the Côte d'Or
Image right: The tractor coming home…

The greatest successes of this issue (alphabetically!):
Jules Desjourneys – 2023 Blancs
Samuel Billaud – 2024
Raveneau – 2024

Don't forget the big summary report of the 2024 Burgundy region vintage
Newly updated:
Vintage 2024

And then all the domaine & tasting visits:

Enjoy !!

The 2019 Champagne? Well, pinot meunier is not my favourite, maybe thanks to that, there were some high-toned esters I didn’t like – but what a wine! Powerful, intense and very long with a strong salinity. This was absolutely a wine that had to be drunk – none left for day two – and also a wine I might consider buying 😉

2022 JJ Archambaud, Vosne-Romanée Aux Réas
Lots of colour. Still a cherry-purple rim. A deep and concentrated nose, unfortunately with quite a lot of creamy oak today – that’s not unfortunate for the future, but my bottle is open today! Wide, intense, a first texture that’s silky but slowly adds some bitters too. Saline, ultra-wide finishing. This is a powerful wine but clearly a bit too young for drinking (with pleasure) today…
Rebuy – Maybe

14 May – my first flowers, Meursault

May 25 mid-flowers – Pinot, Volnay

Chevalier-Montrachet

Chevalier-Montrachet

Corton’s pigs 😉

Absolutely delicious

For later…

Impressively young, but rustic

Best wine of the last 10 days…

Simply excellent…

Well, didn’t that weather change quickly !!

A week ago, we were barely seeing 20°C and the heating in my apartment in Beaune was working to keep a steady 20°C. This week it’s been wall-to-wall 33°C – and at least for the first half of the week, humid too – I now have 26°C in my apartment – and that’s without my heating!

I spotted my first flowers – of course, in the chardonnay – on the 14th of May. That’s the earliest I’ve ever personally seen flowers. It’s always in a wind-shaded but sunny-reflective part of a Meursault 1er Cru. That was, of course, an outlier, but by now we are into mid-flowering in pinot and quite some way through the chardonnay flowering phase.

The weather is ideal for flowering, just a light breeze and over 30°C – all should be finishing in the next few days before the weather changes, cooling and becoming wet – all of which could be true by the middle of next week.

In the Côte d’Or, things are looking very bright after two small volume vintages…

Two 1999s – currently one of my favourite vintages, but not for these two! Both have been stored in the same corner of the cellar for many years. Every wine will be different, and mainly due to the quality of their corks:

1999 Camille Giroud, Bourgogne En Crêots
A wine-saturated cork, though I only broke the first cm. The cork itself smells of oxidised wine – but for older wines (usually 30 years older!) – that’s often the case for a wine-saturated cork, and it doesn’t mean that the wine will be the same.
Medium, medium-plus colour – and no cloudiness. No, there’s hardly any oxidation. Unfortunately, there’s a bit of brett. Direct, silky, plenty of acidity, but also an interesting depth of flavour with a slight accent of oxidation, but no flavour of brett. Long, quite direct and intense finishing. Holding impressively long, a metallic, blood-iron type of flavour, still with some subtle bitters – but no tannic grain. This was potentially a bit of a brute for the first few (15?) years of its life, but it seems quite drinkable – and with a better cork, this would probably be a super Bourgogne.
Rebuy – No but with a better cork, probably.

1999 Michel Gay, Beaune 1er Les Toussaints
What a great cork! Just 2mm of colour from wine ingress – and it comes out in one piece too!
The basic colour is similar to that of the Giroud, but here it’s cloudy and with plenty of sediment that hasn’t settled in 48 hours of ‘uprightness.’ To add to the cloudiness, there’s a pervasive note of brett – really as much as I’ve smelled in a wine for a long time – DNPIM*
Rebuy – No

*Do Not Put In Mouth !!

Three sales – 2 for roughly similar values – but each for way less than a single bottle of Romanée-Conti 1945. The middle of these three for quite a bit more…
Image right from the Auctioneer, Baghera

Done – Andrew Lloyd Weber, £500,000:
Andrew Lloyd Webber sold his wine cellar ‘treasures‘ for charity.

Hosted by Christie’s, this sale was to benefit the provision of musical instruments in schools. There was also a strong sub-text to this sale, in that Lloyd Webber has spoken about how he became an alcoholic, so in the end, the joy that he found in collecting and drinking his ‘Beaunes’ had a sad end – though not so for the schools who will benefit.

This sale raised £517,910 for The Music in Secondary Schools Trust (MiSST), Christie’s said.

Also done – Baghera – nearly 2 million Swiss Francs:
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Baghera/Wines held two auctions in Geneva on May 10, 2026, presented under the catalogues KIPLING #15 Prelude and KIPLING #16 Heartbeat.
Including a bottle of La Romanée 1865 from Bouchard Père & Fils, which achieved CHF 122,000 from two weekend sales that totalled CHF 1’948’183:

TOTAL KIPLING 15 Prelude: CHF 1’378’467 achieved
TOTAL KIPLING 16 Heartbeat: CHF 569’716 achieved

Not quite done – Laurent Ponsot, €500,000:
‘Haute Couture Burgundy, In Never Released Large Formats.‘ This online sale by Sotheby’s opened for bidding on the 15th of May and will close on the 29th of May.

202 lots are being auctioned, each coming directly from his winery, with vintages starting from when he founded his new operation, with his son, in 2017. Not all of the wines included in the sale are grand cru, but they are certainly well represented here, with Bonnes Mares, Chambertin, Clos de Saint Denis, Clos de Vougeot, Échezeaux, Montrachet, Bâtard Montrachet and Corton Charlemagne…

Old wine

New wine

Frozen wine

Drunk wine

Corked wine

Some tasted wine

Chablis

Time for Chablis honey

Frozen but good

And a good cork too…

Last week I was in Chablis – not too cold and not too wet. Unfortunately, the refrigerator in my chambre d’hôte was set way too cold !! So cold, in fact, that two of my bottles froze in there!

The Leroy – the last of a case of 12 – almost lost its cork completely. Truth be told, it was of no loss as the wine was completely corked – yuk – but it was the only bad wine from this case. The Bonnes-Mares fared much better – it was delicious…

It was not the only wine though:

2022 de Moor, Chablis 1er Montmains – delicious, slightly apple fruit aroma as always at this domaine – but a wine of concentration and fruit6 but also of minerality and ‘place!’
2022 Vincent Dauvissat, Chablis 1er Fourneaux – a new wine here since 2021, lost for a couple of years but returning in 2025. A subtle aromatic ripeness of fruit, but a wine of architecture and minerality – it’s a Dauvissat !!
1998 Fougeray de Beauclair, Bonnes-Mares – A fine, robust cork That survived the wine being frozen! Medium colour. Complex and ‘ready’ aromas. Not the power – or tannin – of its youth. But delicious, complex, almost easy drinking…
2021 Alain Geoffroy, Chablis 1er Beauroy (Mag) – Deep but fresh citrus! Open, deliciously energetic and complex, with a little salinity too. A crowd-pleaser !!
2013 Château Mopulin à Vent, Moulin à Vent Croix des Vérillats (Mag) – A beautiful depth of complex, slightly spiced aromas – plenty of attractive development here too. Easy-going, delicious wine – not ultra complex but delicious, easy drinking…