Jasper Morris

Jasper Morris (born 27 December 1957) is a British Master of Wine since 1985. An expert on the wine of Burgundy, with a strong interest in other pinot-producing countries such as New Zealand, he has taken a strong interest in the nascent wine industries of China and Japan, visiting the wine regions of both countries.
Biography.
Morris founded the successful specialist wine importers Morris & Verdin in 1981. He studied to become a Master of Wine concurrently with Jancis Robinson, MW, and with his sister Arabella Woodrow, MW, Morris achieving the accreditation in 1985 and Woodrow in 1986. Morris and Woodrow are the only pair of siblings to be Masters of Wine.
After Berry Bros. & Rudd acquired Morris & Verdin in 2003, Morris was appointed BBR buying director. In May 2008, Morris, together with colleagues at BBR, published "The Future of Wine Report", speculating on the state of the wine industry in the coming 50 years. He retired from the company in July 2017.
In 2016 Morris was appointed as Senior Consult for Christie's with responsibility for the annual Hospices de Beaune Wine Auction.
Morris' early book publications are "White Wines of Burgundy", and "The Wines of the Loire". In September 2010, Morris presented his substantial book "Inside Burgundy", which won the André Simon prize, the initial launch publication of the new BBR publishing division, Berry Bros. & Rudd Press.
Having retired from commerce Jasper Morris has embarked on a new career as Burgundy expert and critic, culminating in the launch of the website Jasper Morris Inside Burgundy in September 2018.
Jasper Morris Inside Burgundy - The Website.
Jasper Morris Inside Burgundy is the perfect website for the Burgundy lover. The website is dedicated to everything about the wines of Burgundy. It complements Jasper Morris’s book, Inside Burgundy, which is a mine of information about the region, the vineyards and the producers.
The website offers up to the minute insights into what is happening in Burgundy today, and extensive reviews of wines past and present.
Jasper Morris's 100 Point and 5 Star Scales.
Jasper Morris Inside Burgundy uses a combination of the following two scales to help distinguish a truly successful wine. The aim is to provide information and to give guidance on which wines are worth buying. For this Jasper Morris has designed a double-headed scoring system: Absolute Scoring on the 100 Point Scale and Comparative Grading out of 5 stars.
The 100 Point Scale.
Most international publications have taken to this scale. It is much more useful in Bordeaux or for other regions where a producer offers a single wine, but less well in Burgundy or wherever a producer has a wide range of wines which tend broadly to follow a hierarchical pattern – in our case generic Bourgogne, village, lieu-dit, premier cru, grand cru.
There will be occasions when a Bourgogne Rouge stands out as a more successful wine than the same producer’s village wine but this doesn’t happen often. So we need some way to flag up wines which are really fine examples of their category. So step forward… The Five Star Scale
The 5 Star Scale.
5 Stars - An outstanding wine in its category. This accolade will be given very rarely, certainly to less than 10% of wines tasted across the year. A generic Bourgogne might deserve this reward if it merits 89 or 90 points whereas a Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles would need 96 for the same result.
4 Stars - An excellent wine in its category and given the ‘unicorn’ status of the fifth star, any producer receiving 4 stars for a wine should be extremely proud of their achievement.
3 Stars - A wine that meets or exceeds expectations: the producer has done very well in this vintage. These wines are recommended for purchase if they fall within your style and pricing brackets.
2 Stars - Two stars may seem ungenerous, but nonetheless this wine fulfils what the appellation or vineyard should be able to offer. While the little bit extra may not be readily evident, this is still a well-made wine.
1 Star - A little bit disappointing compared to expectations. We hope that there will not be too many wines in this category, given that most wines tasted come from producers pre-selected for their quality.
Some wines may not gain a star of any sort though these will normally be suffering from a specific fault.
Jasper Morris's Tasting Reports.
The core activity of the Jasper Morris Inside Burgundy website is the provision of Tasting Reports. Each one of these provides an interesting narrative in its own right, while also populating the database which is growing all the time, and from which at any time you can check up on the current rating of any wine of interest. The Tasting Reports themselves come in various guises and this is fully explained below:
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 31 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.
Inside Burgundy - The Book.
His book, "Inside Burgundy", was published in 2010.
Vineyards & Vignerons.
The appellations & classifications: