Mâconnais: The Headspinning 2015s and The Classic 2014s

BY STEPHEN TANZER | OCTOBER 27, 2016

As on the Côte de Beaune, the Mâconnais produced classically taut, mineral-driven 2014s followed by very rich and in some cases exotic 2015s from a very warm, dry, early growing season. In short, the two vintages offer intriguing choices for every Chardonnay lover.

When I visited the Mâconnais in September to get an in-depth look at the 2015s, many of them recently bottled, I hoped for the best but feared the worst from this hot, dry growing season and extremely early harvest. When it comes to Chardonnay, I relish vibrant, delineated, gripping wines with high-pitched aromatics and distinctive terroir character. And fresh in my mind was what numerous producers had reported during my previous visit to the region early last October, just a couple weeks after the 2015 harvest ended. They told me that 2015 was an exceptionally warm drought year, with much of the harvest in Pouilly-Fuissé and elsewhere in the southern Mâconnais having taken place under extreme conditions at the end of August, when a hot Sirocco wind from the south was concentrating the grapes and sucking the moisture out of the berries—and out of the pickers too. I was aware that while the Côte de Beaune had benefitted from some perfectly timed rainfall to refresh the vines at a few key points during the summer, very little of this moisture had reached the Mâconnais, barely 50 miles to the south.

What I found was indeed a crop of rich, high-alcohol wines whose soil character is frequently dominated, at least in the early going, by varietal and vintage character, not to mention baby fat. But I buy wines, not generalizations, and so should you. The 2015 vintage also produced many compellingly rich wines.

Vines in Macon-Lugny in the late afternoon, September 2016

A Quick Recap of the 2015 Growing Season

The winter was unusually mild. Following a chilly spell in early March, temperatures moderated during the second half of that month and remained warmer than average through April, leading to a very early and relatively quick flowering, which began toward the end of May and mostly finished during a very warm spell in early June (some growers, I should note, reported that millerandage or coulure held down their final crop levels). The rest of May remained warmer than normal, while a stifling eight-day period of heat began on June 30. Temperatures remained significantly higher than normal until the last few days of July.

The weather during the first half of August alternated between very hot days and more moderate, cloudier periods, but the heat returned with a vengeance at the end of the month, breaking on the night of August 31, luckily without the violent hailstorm that caused so much damage in Chablis—in fact, with only 5 to 10 millimeters of rain. That change in the weather essentially marked the end of summer heat, as the next two weeks brought temperatures mostly in the 70s, and then in the 60s during the second half of the month, with some sporadic rainfall.