William Kelley's Notes on the 2024 Vintage - Domaine William Kelley

The following is an excerpt from William Kelley's Release Letter ahead of the release of his 2024 wines from his eponymous domaine:

"The 2024 growing season, our seventh, was the most challenging that we have experienced to date. The year began with dreams and ambition: on the one hand, the accumulated experience and reflection of the six preceding vintages offered numerous pistes for exploration and refinement; on the other, three new domaine parcels tripled our existing surface area and anchored the estate more firmly in Pommard. But widespread shatter, combined with a high average vine age (65 years of age across the domaine at the time of writing) and short pruning made for low to desultory yields between 26.5 and 4.6 hectoliters per hectare across the domaine. Several of our fruit suppliers fared so poorly that they could not honor our customary contracts. The range, therefore, is reduced, and quantities even more so.

Happily, the wines offer considerable consolation. Low yields translate to concentration, and the domaine parcels begin to show a superior quality of tannin, reassuring us that our approach to agronomy is on the right path. As difficult as they were to vinify, we succeeded in executing long, cool macerations and the wines are immensely appealing visually, aromatically and texturally. The reds are reminiscent of the perfumed, succulent 2021s, with an additional dimension of flesh and unctuosity—and hidden beneath that flesh, more structure. Setting aside the growing season, I think they are the most accomplished we have released to date. The whites are chiseled and reductive, evoking 2014 in profile, and they do not carry the stigmata of frost damage that has tended to mark other recent cooler white Burgundy vintages such as 2021 and 2016."