Harvest 2025 in Burgundy
by Daniel Johnnes and Justine Puaud
9/11/2025
I have tried to visit the vineyards of Burgundy, Champagne or the Rhone just before harvest for the last 25 or 30 years. My calendar doesn’t always allow me to do it and the vagaries of the weather - which can delay or advance the harvest start date- make timing a trip very difficult.
The value in such a trip is to get a first hand and up close look at the vines and hear from the winemakers their impressions of how the season has been.
I always cringe when a journalist claims to be the first to declare what the vintage will be like - sometimes as early as June when a region has had beautiful or rainy weather. There is no way to know what the vintage will be like so early. Even winemakers are surprised when they thought they would have a large harvest yet the grapes are stingy with the amount of juice they deliver.
This was the case this past August. I went to Burgundy and spent 3 days traveling with Justine and my deputy sheriff, Eric Railsback, to about a dozen or more producers. Justine writes below in more detail about her experience and vision but overeall I believe there are no longer any bad vintages in Burgundy. The 2025 will be good. Maybe very good. Maybe great. The climate, now changed, nearly always delivers ripe grapes. Yet there is so much more involved in determining the final outcome: disease, rot, hail, drought, sun burn, rain, under ripeness, thick skins,etc.
To find the true expression of a vintage, one must have patience. Of course, an outline of the wine’s personality will appear early but one must allow time for the must to ferment, for bottling, for another year or two for it to settle and then watch it evolve over time.
Only when a few years have gone by, the wine will speak when it is served in the right company with a delicious dish.
-Daniel
with Ben Leroux in Beaune
with the legendary Bernard Morey in Chassagne-Montrachet
I love the harvest spirit! There is a lot of activity and conviviality but it is also the time where the winemakers open their doors for you to see what’s going on at the sorting table, in the vineyard or during the fermentations.
I had the chance to do the harvest at Domaine Camille Thiriet in Corgoloin this year. It was a special harvest as 2025 marks the 10th vintage of their estate. Camille is a dear friend of mine and I have been following her since the beginning. When she started in 2015, she was buying grapes and was making wine in her garage… Now they own over 6 hectares of vines in Côtes de Nuits and a small parcel in Pommard. I was so impressed to see that people from all around the world came to help for the harvest - Italy, China, U.S, Canada, Netherlands but also from Bordeaux and Normandy! Days are very long but everyone worked in such a convivial and fun environment.
The overall statement was low yields (probably 50% less compared to 2022 or 2023) but beautiful grapes with good promises of a good vintage. For Matt, it was difficult this year to pick the right date to start the harvest. In some areas, grapes were not ripe yet but in other parts, we started to see rot and over ripened grapes …
A morning in Pommard - Cuvée Bourgogne les Blanc from Domaine Camille Thiriet
After seeing the vinification at Thiriet’s place and also at Fourrier’s in Gevrey-Chambertin, I notice there is this recurrent question for the vignerons about punching down or pumping over.
To quickly refresh your memory, punching down consists of pushing the “cap” into the juice (manual or mechanical punching down) while pumping over consists of pumping the juice to the bottom of the tank to water the “cap” (made up of the solid parts). As you might imagine, both of these methods have a big effect on how much pigment, tannins and flavors are extracted. These are some big decisions. According to Jean-Marie Fourrier, pumping over is currently a trend. Punching down is the ancestral gesture that made Burgundy wines famous.We need to let nature and the yeasts do their job and not try to move them too much. For Camille it is all about flavours and fining the right extraction and infusion.
Anyway, I love both wines and can’t wait to taste the 2025 vintage!
—Justine
The wonderful harvest team at Camille Thiriet