For all of the excitement surrounding the release of 2022 Burgundies, arguably one should get most worked up about the whites. At every quality level, the wines are scintillating and a step ahead of the already good to very good reds. Few bottles from conscientious producers will disappoint, and they're already mighty tasty. If the prices of Meursault, Puligny, and Chassagne conjure up choice words, feel confident that this is a vintage where you can explore lesser-known or more basic, regional appellations and turn up real gems.

There is also a lot more wine to go around. This is especially true after the devastating 2021 vintage, when frost wiped out Meursault and a combination of frost and hail left many producers bereft in certain sectors of the Mâconnais. Generally speaking, there’s much to get excited about here.

It's Another Excellent White Burgundy Vintage

• The whites are a sheer delight in 2022, from Marsannay to Mâcon. Their vivacity and purity deliver a clear distinctiveness between the plethora of terroirs. While moderately more robust than the 2021s, these 2022 whites show the lithe elegance that Burgundy is known for in its Chardonnays. The Aligotés are ripe yet characteristically crisp.
• If the 2021, 2017, and 2014 whites thrill you, this is a "must" vintage. If you like the 2015s, 2018s, 2019s, and 2020s, it may be better to stand down.
• At least for Meursault, pricing should improve for 2022s. The frost of 2021 meant there was little to sell and what was available went for eye-watering prices. However, even if the prices don't improve, you'll be able to find more of the wines.
• While most producers were equivocal about their pricing when I visited during my annual tour in October and November 2023, the market is pushing back. The elephant in the room is whether consumers decide that the prices will be worth it. It is not just the producer price ex-cellars that matters. More and more, it is the importer mark-up, especially in the U.S., that makes these wines so shockingly priced. This is especially true for the best names.
• Still, Chardonnay from Burgundy is generally more affordable than Pinot Noir—the lower-yielding and far more delicate grape. For hard-core value, Aligoté is always the way to go.
• Curious about Chablis? All you need to know is in a separate overview here.

The 2022 Chardonnays and Aligotés

• The 2022 white Burgundies are über-drinkable today, and the best wines are ready to go the distance. Their structures are balletic, and their harmonies are profound. They also offer just the right amount of mid-palate weight.
• Their alcohol levels range between 12 to 13 percent and occasionally touch 13.5 percent. Still, they feel tenacious and mouthwateringly fresh on the palate thanks in good part to very reasonable pHs.
• Overall, the 2022 whites have more ripe fruit, body, and concentration than 2021s. They are not as dense as 2020s and 2019s, and they are not as extravagantly opulent with fruit as the 2019s, 2018s, and 2015s. 
• The best Premier Crus and almost all of the Grand Crus are age-worthy in this vintage, regardless of the producer. The Chardonnays do not carry my occasional caveats for the reds. While there are plenty of stylistic differences, the white wines are almost universally excellent.
• Those who experienced the era of pre-maturely oxidized—aka premoxed—white Burgundy may retain an understandable anxiety about aging Burgundian Chardonnay. (This despite the fact that producers now have almost a decade’s worth of experience in better understanding how to avoid premox.) Still, aging white Burgundy is an art. White Burgundy can deliver glory in a glass if you have the patience to wait and develop an understanding of which wines will age well given the vintages, the terroirs, and the winemakers. It is also about enjoying the taste of aged white Burgundy. The broader point remains: this vintage produced beautifully age-worthy white wines. If you are looking to judge for yourself whether a wine will age well, just see how long its flavors last on your palate once you’ve tasted the wine. The longer they hang around, the better the wine is—assuming the wine is structurally harmonious, too. 

The Vintage in the Vineyards

• The 2022 vintage was another record-breaker, with more high-temperature days and sunshine accumulation than ever. This was accompanied by 21.5 percent less rainfall than the average between January and September.
• The vintage was so dry that there was hardly any frost pressure in early spring and almost zero hail in the summer.
• Rain eventually came. It arrived at just the right times. Chardonnay fared better than Pinot Noir, with a larger crop that needed further ripening. This meant that it was harvested a bit later, a rare inverse to the typical harvest order, which allowed it more hang time. 
• Lucie Coutoux of Domaine Michel Niellon and Jean-Marc Roulot of Domaine Roulot both say that the fruit was so beautiful that no sorting was necessary.

The Vintage in the Cellars

• In the cellars, malolactic fermentation is less of a preoccupation these days as sunshine degrades malic acid. Besides, 2022 was the sunniest year on record so far. Some producers have been doing experiments to keep the sparse amount of remaining malic acidity or to stop the malolactic fermentation before it completes. They mostly have concluded that it is not worth the highly interventionist effort, given the energy used to cool down cellars or individual vessels and the notable amount of sulfur required to stabilize the wines.
• Producers are eschewing the standard, 228-liter pièce—the Burgundian name for their classic barrel size—and looking toward larger aging vessels for these warmer vintages. Less wood contact­ means less exposure to oxygen, and therefore slower development for the wine, brighter aromatics, and fresher sensations. More alternative vessels are appearing, too. Concrete eggs, amphora, and customized shapes of stainless-steel tanks are all becoming part of the arsenal of tools for emphasizing freshness in Burgundy.
• This year's primary cellar obsession was the carbon dioxide levels in wines. Producers were keen to keep the residual carbon dioxide from fermentations in order to naturally aid the perception of freshness in the wines. The next-level obsession was keeping the fermentation lees. (Expended yeast lees provide natural protection against oxidation.) While producers typically keep lees as the wines age in the cellar prior to bottling, they tended to keep more lees than usual in 2022.
• As the recent, climate change-affected vintages pose new challenges each year, there is no longer a recipe for winemaking in Burgundy. Producers are highly reactive to their circumstances vintage by vintage, and more and more of them have made wine elsewhere in the world. Burgundians have a new spice rack of techniques to create their wines.

Aging 2022 White Burgundies

• These whites are already beguiling and tempting to drink—they were even when I tasted them before they were bottled. Still, the good ones will easily improve through the mid-term, and the best have 15-plus years in them. 
• The very top whites (the eye-wateringly expensive ones—Domaine Leflaive, Coche-Dury, Domaine Leroy, Domaine Roulot, etc.) will age well for 25 years or more. These wines should be set to reveal a new level of profoundness with their intense fruit purity, another characteristic that makes them increasingly incomparable with the great wines of prior decades.

Tips on Buying the 2022 Whites

• Expect prices to increase for most Côte de Beaune whites, as yields there have generally been meager for the last decade. 
• The 2022 vintage is replete with excellent wines from the Côte d'Or, the Côte Chalonnaise, and the Mâconnais. Among top and mid-tier producers, it is genuinely hard to find a bad bottle. 
• The best producers always make great wines. What is often hard to find are excellent (relative) value wines. While many of the following  producers also make very expensive wines, their entry-level wines can be very reasonably priced. (My top choices have asterisks.)