2023 Burgundy Supplement

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | FEBRUARY 13, 2025

This brief supplement to Neal Martin’s extensive report on the 2023 Burgundies covers several dozen wines I tasted on my most recent trip through the region. Readers will want to revisit Neal’s article for an in-depth look at the growing season and the conditions that shaped the wines.

A Personal Journey

I am not exactly sure of when I first became acquainted with the wines of Burgundy, but it was in high school. I remember my maternal grandfather serving a bottle of Trapet Chambertin at Sunday lunch and waxing poetic about it. I am sure that bottle was not inexpensive, but there was nothing in any way luxurious about drinking a bottle of Grand Cru Burgundy back then. I was captivated by the label and wanted to understand what all the words meant. High school was not an easy time. It probably isn’t for anybody. I was a terrible student, constantly in trouble, often suspended and not at all interested in school. All I wanted to do was play music. But I also had a growing interest in the wines my parents sold in their shop. One year, for French class, I decided to do a project on Burgundy. A very kind friend of my mother’s owned a French restaurant. She saved the labels of wines she sold and gave them to me for a project I did on the various villages and appellations. I suppose that was my first wine writing!

Another pivotal moment arrived in 2000. It was my first visit to Burgundy, right as the Euro football championship was getting started. My beloved Italy made a very unlikely run all the way to the final, only to be crushed by a France team that did not give up until the very end and ultimately won the championship on a last-minute Golden Goal.

Tasting from barrel at Alain Burguet, now Jean-Luc Burguet, a domaine I have followed for more than 20 years.

One morning we arrived at Chandon de Briailles. I bought the wines quite frequently at the time, and a retailer back home was able to make an appointment for us. It was a gorgeous, warm summer day. We were greeted by proprietor Claude de Nicolay, who gave us glasses and escorted us onto the street on our way to the cellar. I could not believe I was walking down the street with a wine glass in hand. We then tasted through several wines; I don’t remember how many. Back then it was customary to spit onto the gravel rocks on the cellar floor. I found the experience of tasting wines from barrel with the person who owned the vineyards, who had made those wines, exhilarating. It changed my life.

In late 2010, I was at The Wine Advocate when Robert Parker asked me to take over coverage of Burgundy. What an opportunity. The schedule was absolutely brutal, though, as I had to taste the new vintage in the fall while also doing Barolo, Napa Valley and Champagne within just a few months. It was an impossible task.

Burgundy had fallen by the wayside at TWA. Subscribers were complaining and growers were not too pleased with what they viewed as a revolving door of critics, even though Pierre Rovani had spent an entire decade reviewing the wines. Regardless, it was an important lesson in the importance of stability. I resolved to get Burgundy back into the printed edition of TWA. That was an uphill battle, as we only published six issues a year and competition for pages was intense. I was able to convince Bob to give me the pages for at least the new vintage of reds from barrel. Space was limited, though, and my own schedule was impossible.

So, I focused on what I felt were the most important producers. Not an easy task. On the other hand, this was before the massive proliferation of new domaines that started around that time. I also thought tasting finished wines from bottle was important. Steve Tanzer was my model in that regard. With all due respect to my fellow colleagues, many insiders thought Steve had the best palate for Burgundy among critics. I aspired to reach his level someday. I tasted two vintages at every domaine, the vintage in barrel and the vintage in bottle. Back then, it was possible to taste wines from bottle almost everywhere. At the smaller domaines, those with fewer appellations, it was easy, all the way to the Grand Crus, while at the larger domaines, I tasted a selection. I quickly learned to schedule top domaines on Fridays, as growers were quite happy to take their opened bottles home for the weekend. Today, tasting bottled wines comprehensively in Burgundy is next to impossible given the explosion of demand and prices for those wines.

I have very fond memories of that time. The late Becky Wasserman was very kind to me. Let's face it. Any credibility I had came from the publication I represented rather than my own experience. "What's your biggest challenge?" she asked me over lunch one day. "Using a laptop in the cellars and the amount of time it takes to taste samples from barrel," I replied. "You should ask every producer to set up a table for you with an extension cord and to prepare samples in advance," she suggested. "They will never go for that," I said. "If you ask them all, and half of them do it, it will be a meaningful improvement for you," she advised. It was such a great lesson. A few days later, I turned up at Bruno Clair. He and Philippe Brun, Clair's longtime oenologist at time, were none too pleased at having prepared 20 or so small bottles of samples. We tasted the wines upstairs in the dining room. "We have never done a tasting like this for anyone," Clair told me. Then we tasted. The wines were more transparent than in the cold cellars below. "You know, I am noticing things in my wines I have never seen before," Clair commented. "We should taste like this more often," he said, turning to Brun. That was such a great tasting. And for any fellow critics or reviewers who might read this, you can thank Becky Wasserman for the much improved tasting and writing conditions that are now the norm at many domaines. 

Fifteen years ago, only a handful of people travelled to Burgundy to taste. These shared one-on-one moments, vigneron and critic, talking about the wines in front of a barrel in a calm and intimate setting, are some of my fondest memories in wine. Sadly, these opportunities are disappearing. Some domaines receive so many requests that they feel they have no option but to group tasters together. It’s understandable. After all, a winemaker’s main job is to make wine and there are only so many hours in the day.

I still travel to Burgundy at least once a year out of passion, a desire to keep abreast of reference-point estates and the latest vintages, and a keen interest to discover newer projects while also visiting those producers Neal can’t get to for whatever reason. And of course, I like to sneak in a few meals at my favorite restaurants. So, if you are wondering how my annual supplement of Burgundy reviews came to be, this is it!

© 2025, Vinous. No portion of this article may be copied, shared or re-distributed without prior consent from Vinous. Doing so is not only a violation of our copyright, but also threatens the survival of independent wine criticism.

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