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Domaine Christian Sérafin

It is never easy to take an established domaine like Sérafin and meet two such affable and well-meaning winemakers such as cousins Karine Sérafin and Frédérique Bachotet and then proceed to criticize the wines. I have been coming here for many years and always I feel that they do everything right except for one thing. They employ far too much new oak. And that oak tends to dominate the fruit and terroir expression, leaving quite marked wood tannins on the finish. I tasted older vintages, hoping that the fruit has subsumed the wood, and found that not to be the case. Time and again, I feel that more prudence in terms of new oak would engender more enjoyable and complex wines, deserving of the terroir they preside over. That preponderance of 100% new oak has long been the modus operandi at this address, the way that Karine’s father Christine Sérafin did things.

“We started picking on September 4,” winemaker Frédérique Bachotet informed me. “We picked over six days. Everything is de-stemmed and with just a small amount of chaptalisation. We mature using François Frères, Chassin and Seguin-Moreau.” I enquired whether they are planning any changes at the domaine and interestingly, she told me that they are using more basalt in the vineyard in order to enhance ion exchange. Hopefully, at some point they will at least consider being less rote about the use of new oak, employing a percentage that complements the fruit, whether that is 100% or 20%. Then I am convinced that the wines would be allowed to “breathe” and their respective vineyards would be better articulated.

From 2017 Burgundy: A Modern Classic (Jan 2019) by Neal Martin

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