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Viinin Kuvailu
The Story
Starting with the vintage 2008, the name “Vaudon” will be associated with Joseph Drouhin for all its Chablis wines as a sign of the firm's allegiance to this historical terroir www.drouhin-vaudon.com
Vineyard
Site: the largest and probably most famous Grand Cru, located between Valmur on the left and Blanchot on the right. The exposure is responsible for its generous and powerful character.
History & tradition: it is the cradle of Chablis, already recognized by the medieval monks as a superb location for planting a vineyard. The term "Les Clos" (enclosure, in French) probably refers to the surrounding wall that they built to fence off the parcel. This wall is no longer in existence. At the end of the 19th Century the vineyard was devastated by the phylloxera disease. In the 1960's, Robert Drouhin was one of the first Beaune propriétaires to bring it back to life.
Soil: the Kimmeridgian limestone contains millions of tiny marine fossils embedded in a kind of whitish mortar which may have been once the bottom of the sea...hundreds of million years ago. This marine origin gives the wines of Chablis their unique flavour.
Drouhin estate: 1.3 ha (3.212 acres).
Average of the vines: 37 years.
Viticulture
Biological cultivation since 1990 and biodynamic cultivation since 1999.
Soil maintenance: age-old methods. Plouging: "buttage" (hilling up around the vine-stocks) in autumn; "débuttage" (ploughing back in spring); work between the rows and the vine stocks done with manual tools only.
Treatment: only authorized products for biological cultivation are used - infusions and macerations of plant materials, sulfur and copper, powdered rock. Natural predators are not eliminated.
Plantation density: 8,000 to 10,000 stocks/ha.
Pruning: double Guyot "Vallée de la Marne" (for its resistance to frost).
Yield: we aim for a lower yield, such as it existed before the new law. This yield is therefore the present maximum yield minus 20%.
Average yield at the Domaine: 43.2hl/ha (the yield currently authorized for the appellation is now 54hl/ha).
Vinification
Harvesting: by hand.
Pressing: very slow so as to respect the fruit. Juices from the last pressings are not retained.
Ageing
Type: in oak barrel (0% new wood).
Length: 12 months.
Origin of the wood: French oak forests.
Weathering of the wood: Joseph Drouhin insists on total control of the weathering for a period of 3 years, one of the contributing elements to the elegance of the wine.
Follow-up: barrel by barrel.
Throughout the ageing process, decisions are taken only after careful tasting evaluation. The data obtained is completed through technical analysis. As with every other Joseph Drouhin wine, absolute priority is given to the true expression of terroir and character of the vintage.
Tasting note by Véronique Boss-Drouhin
"A great wine, perhaps the one most able to express what the terroir of Chablis really is like. The colour is pale gold yellow, with greenish hints. Refined nose, with aromas of lily ("fleur de lys"), honey or preserved lemon. Astounding depth and velvety sensation ("gras") on the palate, with some delicate marine nuances. Intense and long aftertaste. After 5 or 6 years, even more complex and subtle aromas develop in the wine. A wine of incomparable finesse".
Vintage
The wines show great purity of taste and a pleasant floral style. Chablis is very mineral in character, almost briny.
Serving
Temperature: 14°C (55°F).
Cellaring: 5 to 15 years.
Wine Information
Autumn 2014/2015 was marked by mild weather and a surplus of rain, mostly in October and November.
Winter only started to make itself felt in January, but the freezing temperatures lasted only a few days in February. One can compare this Autumn and Winter to that of 2013 and 2014.
March was fairly cool, but already marked by a deficiency in rainfall of about 9%.
In mid-April we see the first green leaf tips in the Côte, and fairly warm temperatures accelerate the growth of the vines so that the stage of 3 to 4 unfurled leaves is reached at the end of the month.
The continuing mild temperatures permitted the rapid growth of the vines between the 5th and the 10th of May, allowing us to reach the stage of 7-8 leaves unfurled.
Because of this rapid growth, caterpillars hardly had time to do damage and were not a problem as was the case in 2014.
We had be vigilant during this time with fungal diseases such as powdery mildew, but at the end of May the situation was very healthy in the Côte de Beaune as in the Côte de Nuits.
The flowering took place in June over the space of a few days thanks to the ideal sunny and bright weather.
This is one of the most precocious years as 2007 and 2003.
A rainy period between March 10 and June 15 brought some much needed moisture.
The month of July was marked by strong sunshine and high temperatures that seemed to block the "veraison” a little, however it was noticeable from the beginning of July. It's worth noting that the average temperature was 25°C for the month with a peak of over 35°C.
The rains of early August unblocked the situation, bringing some freshness and rapid ripening. The month enjoyed mid-level temperatures and by mid-August "veraison” of 90% is reached in the Côte.
The temperatures of the summer months accelerated the ripening of the grapes, the tannins, and the thickening of the skin of grapes.
In September Burgundy came back to seasonal temperatures and the weather was fortunately a little cooler. The harvest started on the 2nd of September in hot, sunny conditions. The characteristic of the vintage is that the grapes are extremely healthy without rot, botrytis or fungal disease. Sorting was hardly necessary.
The yields are satisfactory in Chablis and the Mâconnais, low to correct in the Côte d'Or Chardonnay, low to very low in the Côte d'Or Pinot Noir.
Vinification was obviously adapted to the characteristics of the vintage; the grapes naturally possessed good potential for colour, nice tannins and a good degree of alcohol. It was necessary to adopt gentle winemaking methods to preserve the elegance and freshness. A feature of this vintage is that the malic acid levels are rather low. In general vinification lasted from 15 days to 3 weeks.
The style of the wine for the 2015 vintage:
The Reds:
The colours are very pretty, often very intense, especially in the Côte de Nuits.
The bouquet is also intense with notes of ripe red fruits.
Overall the wines show a nice tannic structure.
This vintage offers richness and density.
The Côte de Nuits is very homogeneous, Côte de Beaune a little less; especially in the southern villages.
The whites:
On the whole, there is great consistency in the character of the wines followed by a deep aromatic richness in the register of ripe fruits.
In the mouth they have character and are sometimes unctuous without being heavy. They respect the typicity of their geographical origin.
The whites from Mâconnais are bottled as well as some from Chablis.
Notes of white peaches and orchard blossom are supported by an interesting mineral framework.
We will start the bottling process for the other wines in autumn.
In conclusion: 2015 is among the best vintages of Burgundy. The wines will be good to drink from now, and the reds have an impressive potential for keeping, in the line of 2005 and 1990.
Frédéric DROUHIN
August 30th 2016
Vuosikerta 2015
The 2015 Harvest by Clive Coates MW
The bad news is Chablis. In the early hours of Tuesday 1st September a severe storm hit the Chablis area. From Irancy up to the grands crus of Blanchots and Les Clos a swathe of hail – some hailstones as large as golf balls – has affected some 100 hectares of the vineyard. In all 97 mm of rain fell in six hours. The weather then cleared, threatening rot, and most growers rushed out to harvest before it was too late. Thankfully most of the grands crus have reverted to picking by hand, so a preliminary triage could be accomplished before the fruit arrived at the winery.
Elsewhere Burgundy has been spared. It did not rain. A token amount of Chardonnay harvesting began in the week of August 31th, and by the following Monday the harvest was fully under way. The weather then cooled, not only conserving the acidities, but making life more pleasant for the pickers. I can attest from my experience with the 1964 crop over forty years ago that it is not much fun picking grapes in unrelenting heat. The first week – that is the week of September 7th – the weather was fine. Later in September the weather cooled a little. It stayed dry until the weekend of 12th September, when the first serious rain for two months or more fell in the Côte d'Or and further south. For two or three days during that week the picking was interrupted. By Saturday 19th September the harvest was all but over except for a few vineyards in the Hautes Côtes.
All the way from the Côte d'Or down to the Mâconnais the fruit was in splendid condition. Michel Lafarge reported that he has rarely seen such magnificent grapes, and his comments have been echoed by others. Aromas in the cellars are intoxicating. A further bonus is that after several years of short crops the 2015 harvest is reasonably abundant. For this much thanks.
Prices, however seem destined to be high; perhaps the highest in real terms that they have ever been. The Hospices auction will give us an indication of this. But when we read that Henri Jayer's Vosne-Romanée, Cros Parentoux, 1996 now fetches £90000 a case one can hardly expect comparable wines of the 2015 vintage to sell for peanuts.
September 1st 2015
The splendid weather in July has been followed by an August, which, if not quite so continuously hot and sunny, has been for the most part equally good, particularly towards the end of the month.
And it has continued dry. There have been, thankfully, no storms, no hail, and no threat of rot. Indeed the vines are in magnificent condition. The advance weather forecast for September tells us that it will cool over the first ten or so days, but then warm up again. The harvest will start during the next week or so, and all indications are that it will be both plentiful and successful. Just what Burgundy needs. It's all smiles here!
August 1st 2015
The weather has been splendid for a the whole of the month of July: day after day of warm, sometimes very hot temperatures, and almost a complete absence of rain. While this has made the lawns look rather dispiritingly brown and parched, the vines, with their deep root systems, have suffered no drought stress, and those people with swimming pools have been able to indulge in their fortune. For once, while there have been a couple of thunderstorms, the vineyards have escaped any hail damage.
The vintage is due to commence around the week of September 7th. Keep your fingers crossed that the good weather continues. The long range weather forecast indicates that, though not as hot or as dry as July, the weather in August will be mainly sunny and warm.
July 1st 2015
The weather has been splendid for a month now, and the projections continue promising. Slowly but surely during the month the temperatures rose, and in this last week they have reached well above 30°. Meanwhile it has been dry but not excessively so. The vines have flowered successfully, indicating a plentiful crop, bar disasters. As I indicated a month ago, the harvest should commence around September 10th.
June 1st 2015
It was an uneventful winter. When it was cold – and it was never very cold – it was dry. When it rained the temperatures were mild. So there was no problem with icy roads. April was warmer and drier than usual, as it often has been recently, and this encouraged a bud-break a little earlier than usual. But May, apart from a couple of days in the middle of the month when it reached 32°, was characterised by sunny mornings, clouding over by lunchtime, and temperatures which struggled to exceed 20°. But it has been dry. The vines began to flower around the 25th. So we can expect the harvest to commence around the 10th September.
