Fiona’s Blog

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.

Last weekend, I took advantage of the rain and cold to snuggle up with my favourite part of our yearly wine guide, the “Kelder Restjes” or “Fonds du Cave.” These are the wines that we only have left in small quantity, and it understandably is the first part of the wine guide that our clients dive into.

This question has been on my mind a great deal recently. Last year we saw Burgundy wine prices skyrocket and the trend has continued for much of this year. This year we watched as the best wines of the highly touted 2022 Bordeaux, wines such as Petrus, Lafite, Vieux Chateau Certan and Figeac sold for upwards of 20% above the previous year’s releases. Quite frankly, we wondered whether we would be able to sell some of these wines. Much to our surprise, they were the first wines to sell out; there is a sense of luxury in being able to afford the world’s best wines, which are often made in small quantities that make them rarer.

2022 is a miraculous vintage. It was the year that the vine showed its resilience to climate change and adapted to both the heat and the drought that were present throughout the summer, to make elegant, fresh, fruity wines that often showed the best of the terroirs in which they grow. We have never seen anything like it!