‘Still a Lot of Love Out There’: The Beautiful Drinkability of Burgundy’s 2023

Burgundy often feels like an exclusive club, where collectors and fans converge on the small town of Beaune a few times a year for high-end events and gatherings. They open priceless bottles pulled from producers’ cellars – and their own – and share their endless devotion to vineyards and top estates. Debates about vintages, quality and ageworthiness can rival those about professional athletes or even racehorses. Everyone has an opinion, and many of them let you know it.

The fact that the most expensive bottles in the world come from Burgundy, with some costing tens of thousands of dollars just weeks after release, only pours fuel on the fire of these passionate discussions. Auction headlines are often filled with rarefied Burgundy wines selling for the price of new cars, even houses.

But that only tells one side of the story.

Senior Editor Stuart Pigott and I discussed this repeatedly during a short trip to Beaune at the end of May, where we aimed to get a handle on the region’s newest vintage in bottle: 2023. We tasted a few hundred samples and visited key vineyards and wineries with owners and winemakers. Associate Editor Ryan Montgomery and tasting assistant Hugo Wong joined us.

There’s much more to Burgundy than sky-high prices and cult labels. And that becomes clear in a vintage like 2023, when producers had to apply all their skills in the vineyard and cellar to craft compelling wines from a large, unevenly ripe crop. The temptation to cash in was strong – after all, 2019 and 2020 were smaller harvests, and 2021 was tiny.

“There are always going to be 300 people in the world who will buy a barrel of Musigny – about 304 bottles,” said Veronique Drouhin, whose family owns the storied Burgundy house Joseph Drouhin. “But we have so many other wines, and people shouldn’t think Burgundy is only expensive. Good wines at affordable prices do exist, and I’m trying to communicate that. Just because a few people speak louder than others doesn’t mean there isn’t quality and value in Burgundy.”

It’s not exactly a bargain, but one of my favorite reds of the trip was the Joseph Drouhin Beaune 1er Cru Clos des Mouches 2023. At about $120, compared with $1,200 a bottle for her Musigny, and from a holding of 13.57 hectares – the largest in any single Beaune Premier Cru – it’s a special wine. That breaks down to 6.82 hectares of white and 6.75 hectares of red, the latter larger than the entire La Tache Grand Cru. For comparison, Drouhin owns just 0.68 hectares in Musigny.

The Clos des Mouches 2023 is terrific: a young red with refinement and intellectual integrity, showing iodine, blackberry and rose-stem notes, backed by fruit and depth. Medium-bodied with fine tannins that caress every inch of the palate, the aftertaste delivers endless flavors of Indian spices, flint, nutmeg and light crust—always maintaining finesse. It's drinkable now but will be better in three or four years.

Beaune itself seems to be an appellation worth considering in 2023. Some of our most exciting moments during the trip came from finding outstanding quality in less-revered appellations and village-level bottlings, including lieu-dits. Many of these wines are priced under $100.

There are 337 hectares of Premier Cru vineyards in Beaune, producing about two million bottles in a vintage like 2023. So there’s plenty to go around. And that’s why the geeks aren’t interested: these wines aren’t exclusive or expensive enough.

But the quality can be outstanding, and the historical context adds richness. As Dimitri Bazas, the technical director at Maison Champy, told me: “The special situation of Beaune is a historical accident. It is the capital of the region, because behind the town is a huge area of very good vineyards.”

Unfortunately, the region’s reputation has occasionally been undermined by overworked wines. “So many producers here still think that winemaking is a competition, which leads to too much extraction and too much new oak,” Bazas said. That helps explain why some 2020s and 2022s from otherwise well-known domaines feel overblown.

By contrast, the 2023s often feel dialed-in and elegant. For example, a deep dive with a few dozen producers in Marsannay and Fixin left Stuart and Ryan wondering why more wine lovers aren’t buying these bottles, especially when so many are around $50 to $60. They found a wealth of exciting wines with distinctive personality, and the freshness of the majority of 2023s was striking.

“The soils are rather like those in Chassagne-Montrachet and the pH of the wines is low, so along with reds, we also produce excellent whites with chardonnay and aligote,” said Sylvain Pataille. His daring dry whites and pinot noir reds rightly enjoy a cult following. This fact alone demolishes the notion that Marsannay is a little brother to nearby Gevrey-Chambertin; the wines of these communes contrast rather than resemble one another.

A longtime favorite, Domaine Charles Audoin, delivered the two best wines of these focused tastings. Stuart couldn’t decide if the incredibly concentrated and refined Marsannay Les Favières 2023, with its great chalky minerality, was better than the Marsannay Aux Champs Salomon 2023, which is as graceful as it is rich. Both are outstanding, and they’re only a whisker ahead of winemaker Cyril Audoin’s other single-vineyard bottlings. They all stand out for their enveloping aromas and great silkiness.

The other star producer here is Domaine Bruno Clair, where brothers Arthur and Edouard Clair make deep, structured wines. The racy, extremely focused Marsannay Les Grasses Têtes 2023 wowed us. Any Marsannay wine from this domaine should dispel the doubts of those who cling to the current vineyard classification. Even the Marsannay Longeroies 2021 was fragrant and well-structured – an impressive result for such a challenging vintage.

There’s no doubt in Stuart’s mind that Marsannay has made a leap forward in wine quality. When he asked a number of winemakers about this, Cyril Audoin immediately mentioned the move back to hand harvesting. “We have a lot of very good vineyards and winemakers,” he said. “But 15 years ago, only Bruno Clair, we, and a couple of others bothered to hand harvest.” Quite possibly, the arrival of the Premier Crus will help Marsannay climb even higher.

We spent a couple of days focused on these two northern appellations not just for their price–quality ratio, but to see how they’re handling hot and erratic vintages like 2023. It turns out they are performing on the level of their loftier neighbors, like Vosne-Romanee, Chambolle-Musigny and Gevrey-Chambertin.

Fully a dozen producers scored at least one rating of 95 points or above, which confirms what organizer Bernard Bouvier of Domaine René Bouvier told Stuart: “We are a very underrated appellation, but we are sure that getting some Premier Crus soon will help change this. That’s why my colleague Laurent Fournier of Domaine Jean Fournier and I put so much effort into the campaign for Premier Cru.”

Currently, Marsannay has just over 214 hectares planted with pinot noir, which means about one million bottles in a generous vintage like 2023. The just over 50 hectares of chardonnay yield about a quarter of that. The applications for 14 Premier Cru sites – for red and white – are still awaiting approval by the authorities, nearly 20 years after the application process began. Fixin has 22 hectares of Premier Cru sites and 103 hectares of village vineyards, with a majority planted with pinot noir. 

Of course, geography alone didn’t determine quality in 2023.

“With this warm climate in 2023, we had a lot of heterogeneity in the vineyards, with dried clusters and other imperfections, so it wasn’t the quality we wanted,” said Solene Panigai, the winemaker at Olivier Leflaive, the Puligny-Montrachet-based negociant and vineyard owner. “August was also difficult – during veraison, when the grapes change color – so we had to select the best bunches.”

Still, the large crop turned out to be an advantage. “What was important was the sorting,” Panigai added. “We called in more help to sort in order to get the best quality grapes in the tanks. It was possible with this good quantity. We also gave strict guidance to our pickers to sort in the vineyards.”

Frederic Weber of Bouchard Père & Fils noted that some vineyards in key appellations could have produced more than 100 hectoliters per hectare. “You had to green harvest. It was so important,” he said. But most of the winemakers and viticulturists we met reported final yields of around 35 to 40 hectoliters per hectare.

The larger crop also contributed to the beautiful drinkability of so many of the wines we tasted, both red and white. While we expected dark, powerful wines – like some of the 2022s, which at times resembled syrah – what we found instead were aromatic, nuanced reds true to their origin. Descriptors like “long,” “bright” and “fresh” were common in our tasting notes. The whites followed suit.

“You feel like 2023 is a fresh year,” said Alessandro Noli of Domaine du Clos de Tart. “2022 feels so much sunnier than 2023. There’s so much drinkability. I’m a great fan of 2023, even if it’s not considered a great vintage by some. It made very Burgundian pinot noirs. 2023 is the kind of vintage you want in your cellar.”

The size of the 2023 harvest may also offer relief after the small 2021 and 2020 vintages. Some producers even mentioned the possibility of lowering prices, making the wines more accessible.

We’re confident most wine lovers would benefit from having a few bottles of 2023 Burgundy in their cellars, especially with the charm and structure many are showing right now. With strong quality and relatively good pricing at the village and lieu-dit levels, there’s much to choose from beyond the rarefied Grand Crus.

When you compare a top bottle of 2023 Burgundy with similarly priced pinot noirs from other parts of the world, Burgundy often shines. It’s not just exclusive or collectible – it’s just outstanding pinot.

As Veronique Drouhin, who also makes pinot noir in Oregon, told me after I tasted through a range of her 2023s, “There’s still a lot of love out there for Burgundy.”

– James Suckling, CEO & Publisher, with Stuart Pigott, Senior Editor

The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated by James Suckling and the tasters at JamesSuckling.com. Note: You can sort the wines below by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.