The “new” Burgundy versus the “old guard”

I have been thinking about this for awhile, and it’s an interesting topic for me.

I think in recent years we’ve found Burgundy even at the grand cru level to be more accessible early, especially in less structured vintages like 2017 and 2021.

That being said, there has been an emergence of new producers, many of which have been making wine in less heralded winemaking regions, such as William Kelley (although he does also make 1er and grand cru wines), Guilbert Gillet, with their strong focus on Savigny, Jerome Galeyrand, with his best wines being from the cote de nuits villages, Koji, and Camille Thieret.

While these producers have different inspiration and mentors, as well as different principles for both viticulture and winemaking, their wines in general tend to offer a lot of immediate pleasure and often transcend their terroir in terms of their depth, harmony and balance.

The combination of small production and social media hype has generally led to extremely high pricing in the secondary market compared to traditional producers, and often led more experienced wine drinkers to eschew these wines, which to me is a mistake. I don’t think the wines are particularly comparable to Bourgogne or village wines from traditional producers, because many of those wines are an afterthought for those producers, while these producers are using the same, or indeed more innovative techniques in the vineyard and winery on in many cases their relatively humble holdings as top producers are using on their grand crus.

While we don’t have a long term track record on these wines, I’m not sure many are designed for long term aging with the exception of the higher level WK wines. I’m not really sure how this will change things in burgundy but it does reinforce the basic truth that the producer is the most important factor for Burgundy.