2023 Savigny Les Beaune Les Peuillets

The 2023 Savigny-lès-Beaune les Peuillets 1er Cru has a far more sophisticated and nuanced bouquet with strawberry pastilles, Morello cherries and crushed limestone scents. There's plenty of energy here, with the 20% whole bunch lending a light pepperiness. Slightly attenuated toward the finish, I suspect it will fill out by the time of bottling. "The 2023 vintage is the largest since I started in 2005," David Croix tells me. "The first in which I produced the volume I'm legally allowed. The average is 50 hl/ha, so I am not at a level where it is being distilled. Once in a while, that feels good. The wines have an ease to them, especially on the clayey soils or at the bottom of the hill, but they're not just pretty wines, something that I have realized during barrel maturation. The crazy heat wave at harvest impacted the style of the wines as the sugar levels went up quickly. It was extreme, in a sense. We picked beginning on September 4 with one parcel, the main heart of the picking occurring between September 6-13. At 10 a.m., it was already 27°C. We only picked before midday, and we gained two degrees in alcohol during the week of picking. We had done some green harvesting, but I know people that did that, and the vines then compensated, so yields still ended up high. It was another year where I struggled with native yeasts and getting the sugars to start fermenting. Having higher pH makes things complicated. There were three cuvées where I could not get the fermentation going, so I am using a more scientific method of harnessing the yeasts in the vineyard, like a pied de cuve, so that the fermentation is ready to go. I think 2023 is a bit like 2017 but the heatwave imparts more concentration and extract. The wines have really been changing but, at the moment, I only see two cuvées that might need a longer barrel maturation."

The 2023 Savigny-lès-Beaune les Peuillets 1er Cru has a far more sophisticated and nuanced bouquet with strawberry pastilles, Morello cherries and crushed limestone scents. There's plenty of energy here, with the 20% whole bunch lending a light pepperiness. Slightly attenuated toward the finish, I suspect it will fill out by the time of bottling.