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  • Country ranking ?

    732
  • Producer ranking ?

    21
  • Decanting time

    4h
  • When to drink

    2020-2035

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Vintage 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.

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Written Notes

Interestingly, and particularly so given the generally high level of expressiveness of many of the prior wines, this is all but mute and requires aggressive swirling to reveal ripe yet elegant and airy aromas of red currant, spice, smoke, wet stone and a hint of underbrush. There is evident refinement to the mineral-driven and caressing medium-bodied flavors that exhibit lovely delineation on the mildly austere, firm and beautifully well-balanced and lingering finale. This is very classy with a Zen-like sense of harmony. 92-95 points

Producer note:
Technical director Frédéric Barnier unequivocally described 2015 as a "great vintage. The wines have everything they need to rival the best that we have made in a very long time. The growing season began with a temperate and humid spring and thank goodness it did because without that rain we would have had real problems given how hot and dry the summer was. Interestingly bud burst wasn't really especially precocious as the beginning of April was cool but as conditions turned ever warmer and drier, the vegetative growth accelerated accordingly. As such the early June flowering was precocious and rapid which contributed greatly to the homogeneity of fruit maturities we enjoyed at the harvest. June remained hot and dry but thankfully we had a storm that dropped 50 to 60 mm of rain right at the end of the month. In my view this one storm did more than anything else to save the harvest because by the middle of a baking hot July we had temperatures climb to 42° C (107.6° F) and it was bone dry.

 

We began to see in certain parcels the phenomenon known as bloquage (hydric stress) and it was responsible for delaying the véraison though it's hard to say exactly for how many days. Thankfully, yet again, August was more moderate because while it remained very warm, it wasn't quite as extreme as July plus we had at least some rain. This also contributed considerably to why the fruit was so balanced in its various components and it also explains why the wines are definitely ripe but not surmature in the fashion that some 2003s and 2009s are. We began picking on the 1st of September with the chardonnay and the conditions were warm and dry and we were able to take our time yet harvest rapidly as the fruit was so clean that it required almost no sorting. Potential alcohols in red came in between 13 and 13.8% and thus nothing was chaptalized.

 

The structural elements were also quite ripe but perhaps the most surprising aspect was how good the post-pHs were at between 3.45 and 3.6. Yields though were highly variable though on average the reds were off 30% though the whites were off only 5 to 10%. But those figures can mask the realities in certain villages because for example quantities were off fully 50% in Volnay, Pommard and Beaune. The vinifications were relatively calm and slow and lasted for around 3 weeks. I used a bit of whole cluster for certain wines in the Côte de Nuits though not all. Another surprising aspect is how much the wines have changed during their élevage as they have both freshened and become more precise. As to comparing the two Côtes, as a broad generalization I would say that the Côte de Nuits produced reds that are a little rounder than those of the Côte de Beaune but the diversity is such that it's easy to find exceptions. For us Gevrey is particularly good in the Côte de Nuits, and Beaune is the star in the Côte de Beaune. As to the wines themselves, what I find so interesting is that they aren't really like other wines that were produced by so-called very hot vintages.

 

The 2015s do not at all present themselves like the 2003s because in 2003 it was August that was so hot whereas in 2015 it was July. Moreover 2015 is at least good everywhere and often even great. As to style, for our reds at least, they remind me of a combination of 2009 and 2010. It's interesting to speculate as no one ever knows for sure but my guess is that the reds are likely to close up once they're bottled but the key question is for how long? Notwithstanding all the possible comparisons that one can make, for me 2015 is unique as there is no other vintage in my experience that really resembles it." For many years now Jadot has an enviable track record for producing some of the best reds of the vintage in particularly hot years (1997 and 2003 for example) and 2015 is no exception.

And I completely agree with Barnier that their portfolio of Beaune 1ers is excellent but don't pass up their Volnay and Pommard 1ers either. Lastly, the Jadot Gevrey 1ers are brilliant so there are a broad range of excellent choices. Two other value plays are worth noting, which are the excellent Côte de Nuits-Villages "Le Vaucrain" and the Monthélie "Sous Roches". Note that a large number of 2014's were also revisited below in bottle.

  • 95p

Bright ruby. Scented, some spices, red berries, floral notes, raspberries, nuanced nose. Quite seductive. Fresh acidity, ripe tannins, fresh, fruity, anise, some spices, structured, detailed, layered, long. 94

  • 94p
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Information

Origin

Beaune, Burgundy

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