When Jacques announced that he wanted to organise a vertical tasting of Vieux Château Certan in our family home at Hof te Cattebeke, we realized that this would be an historic event. Many of the wines until the 1960s had been transported to Etikhove in barrel by rail and bottled in our cellars and had not moved since then so the provenance was impeccable. With time and research, and a little help from family and friends, we managed to assemble 58 vintages and we invited a small group of international journalists to join us as we opened the wines over a two-day period.

The 2022 vintage seems to have truly marked the coming of age of modern Burgundy. There is a sense of turning the page, of embracing organic and regenerative viticulture, of the transmission between generations and an optimism that growers can overcome whatever climate change throws their way.

Following a series of difficult vintages, mainly provoked by the challenges of climate change - drought, frost, mildew, heatwaves, hail - to cite just a few examples, you may have noticed how different many vineyards look today compared to the tightly manicured rows of a decade ago. Today wine growers are questioning the traditional way of safeguarding the health of their vines that used synthetic pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides to grow grapes.