In general, the 2011 burgundies are good at showing tasteable differences between vineyards

As I suspected, the hundreds of 2011 burgundies hawked on London tasting tables in the past two weeks seemed, in general, rather less vivid than those I’d tasted at the end of November at some of the C?te d’Or’s finest addresses.

This is clearly a vintage where the best wines will be highly appreciated by lovers of fine, expressive burgundy, but there are many lesser wines that seem a bit thin and weedy if red, or watery if white. Few 2011s have a real persistence in the mouth and hardly any wines I tasted in London were thrilling enough to get a really high score from me. That said, the whites seemed to have withstood the journey from Burgundy rather better than the reds, perhaps because a high proportion have already been safely put into bottle in their finished form. Many of the red wine samples were drawn from cask before Christmas, and given a squirt of sulphur to stabilise them before being put into bottles. It’s a wonder that they showed as well as they did.