An Introduction to Tasting Reports

Reports By:

Search here, by scrolling through the drop-down menus below, for Tasting Reports by vintage, producer, village or outside burgundy:

JMIB Tasting Notes

All wines are given both a point score and a star rating: A full explanation can be found by clicking on “An Introduction to Tasting Notes” below.

An Introduction to Tasting Notes

Find out more about the combination scales used alongside each other to help distinguish a truly successful wine.

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Tasting Reports

Many of the Tasting Notes in our database originated in reports on a vintage, vineyard or producer. These can be accessed in full via the drop down menu.

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En Primeur Barrel Tastings

These are conducted at the domaines between September and December in the year following the vintage. The wines may still be in barrel, or tank, or recently bottled and will not be tasted blind. A range of scores will be given if the wine has not yet been assembled for bottling, or a single score if the wine has been bottled. The complete report with notes on the growing seasons and comments on how each appellation has performed will be released on 31st December. Further tasting notes may be added during the following six months.

The Burgfest Tastings

The Burgfest Tastings of the principal 1ers and Grands Crus take place three years after the vintage, with the whites tasted in May and the reds in September. The wines are sourced from the producers and tasted blind against their immediate peers. The wines are decanted into neutral carafes and served blind in short flights of single or neighbouring vineyards.

The 10 Year On & 20 Year on Tastings

10 Year On and 20 Year On Tastings are held (together) in June of the appropriate year. The wines are sourced from the producers and are not served blind, so examples of the same wines in the market place may not have the same provenance.

Producer Verticals

Producer Verticals may be instigated by the producers themselves or be the result of tastings and dinners assembled by reliable collectors or our own efforts. The background to the tasting will be explained in each case in the introductory remarks. These wines are not usually tasted blind.

Vineyard Focus

Vineyard Focus tastings will cover a specific vineyard and multiple producers, either in a vertical or a horizontal format, teasing out the character of the vineyard in question while establishing who are the key performers.

Recent Reports

2013 Vintage Overview
A very tricky vintage with an October harvest for the reds, some of which will be meagre – but there are also some wines with the potential to...
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2012 Vintage Overview
Something of a forgotten vintage, not written off as one of the failures, but a little overlooked as collectors concentrate on the big guns.
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2011 Vintage Overview
This was the third harvest of the new century to begin in August – compared to only one per century in the previous few hundred years.
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2010 Vintage Overview
The weather The winter was cold, exceptionally cold, with temperatures dropping below -20°Cshortly before Christmas.
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2009 Vintage Overview
The hype which greeted the 2009 vintage in Bordeaux carried over to a lesser extent to Burgundy.
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2008 Vintage Overview
I nicknamed 2008 as the second Sarkozy summer (see 2007): it was another cool and frequently damp season during which the ground never warmed up...
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2007 Vintage Overview
I overheard a Frenchman saying to his friend at the Gare du Lyon in August 2007: ‘Do you know, we haven’t had a single day of sunshine since we...
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2006 Vintage Overview
It is tough to follow on from a ‘vintage of the century’ such as 2005.
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2005 Vintage Overview
For years I used to discuss the potential of a good new red- burgundy vintage with Dominique Lafon, and we would say ‘yes, that’s good, but not...
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