I want to take you back to the end of August. We were nervous. Talk around us was that yet again, harvesting in Bordeaux was beginning at the earliest dates ever recorded. We walked around our vineyards nervously checking the state of the vine leaves; noticing the cracks in the parched soil; consulting again and again all the different weather apps we had on our telephones. Absolutely not necessary to check our rain monitors; they had been dry for months.

My most recent visit to Burgundy took place during the week of the annual Hospices de Beaune auction, although I got out of town before the gavel went down.  All week, there had been a frenzied excitement brewing in the bourgeois streets of Beaune; press and trade were whispering under their breaths that prices would be astronomical; that this year it would be the négociants not the producers who would be buying the Hospices barrels and that the results of the sale would affect the future of Burgundy wines for the next few years...

2020 zal in Bordeaux eeuwig bekend staan als de derde jaargang in een geweldige trilogie van wijnjaren 2018-2019-2020. Toch is het verhaal achter de 2020's veel interessanter dan louter de schitterende kwaliteit...