Gleeful vintage reports always have to be viewed with a healthy degree of suspicion (especially with news leaking through of rain during the harvest). Even so, Bernard Hervet of Bouchard maintains that 1999 will prove to be an excellent year for red Burgundy, and maybe the vintage of the decade for white. Peter O'Gorman of Beams restaurant and wine shop in Carlow, recently returned from working his 31st harvest at Domaine de l'Arlot in Nuits-St Georges, reports that the quality of the grapes was the best he has ever seen. Conor Richardson of Burgundy Direct, who probably has a better Burgundy overview than anybody else in the Irish wine trade, agrees that, fingers crossed, it should turn out to be a classic year.