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Domaine Faiveley

Technical director Jérôme Flous, who has been working at Faiveley since 2007, thinks 2017 is the white wine vintage highest in dry extract since then; he compared these wines to the estate’s 2006s. “The trick was not to pick before the skins and seeds were ripe,” he told me in early June. “The grapes were better just after the rain at the end of August, but we had to pick soon, before sugars skyrocketed in the early September sunshine.” In fact, Faiveley brought in virtually all of their Chardonnay during the first five days of September, with potential alcohol levels between 13% and 14%, and Flous did not chaptalize. Levels of tartaric acidity were high owing to the dry August and were not really affected during the rains at the end of the month and beginning of September, he told me. In fact, noted Flous, the 2017 whites are “paradoxical in their concentration of fruit balanced by lively acidity. It’s a vintage that showed us that you can pick very early and make a minerally, strong-acid vintage.”

Flous emphasized that yields in the estate’s Chardonnay vineyards were lower than in their Pinot Noir parcels and much more homogeneous (“some Pinots may taste like syrup and water”), noting that the period of cold weather in late April had less of an effect on ultimate Pinot Noir production because these vines were less advanced at the time. He believes that the Chardonnays will need longer élevage than the Pinots, even though 2017 was a vintage with higher aromatic maturity in Chardonnay than either 2016 or 2015, due in part to less stress in the vines. He summarized: “We had perfect phenolic maturity and the 2017s are strong, robust and balanced—and not likely to oxidize prematurely.” At the time of my visit, Flous was not expecting to rack the '17s until late winter. The malolactic fermentations were mostly done by the time of my visit, and I tasted only from finished barrels.

From 2017 White Burgundy: Quantity, Quality and Great Charm (Sep 2018) by Stephen Tanzer

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2017 Ladoix-Serrigny

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Domaine Faiveley

2017 Ladoix-Serrigny

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