2013 Côte-Rôtie Lancement

Now fully settled into his massive new winery at the southern end of Ampuis, Stéphane Ogier can handle his growing portfolio of wines far more efficiently than he could in his old cellar. (That facility, which is next to his parents' home on the west side of the railroad tracks smack in the middle of Ampuis, is now mostly used for equipment storage, but given Ogier's appetite for new vineyards, I suspect it will soon come in handy for bottle storage as well.) The Belle Hélène and Lancement bottlings will not be made in 2014, so severely low were the yields and strict selections in the vineyards and at the sorting table.

I tasted this year's set of wines in Ogier's spacious new cellar at the southern end of Ampuis, just across the road from the massive Vidal-Fleury winery and with a fantastic view of the Côte Blonde--and, especially, Ogier's beloved Lancement vineyard. Production here has exploded in recent years as Stéphane has been on a vineyard acquisition tear of late, picking up land in Côte-Rôtie and Condrieu, as well as in the southern Rhône. He admits that he's taking on a lot of work but said that "great vineyards don't come up for sale very often and if you don't jump on them you might regret it forever." The new cellar, which looks to be at least five times the size of his old digs in Ampuis, will allow him to be far more efficient in processing fruit and staging rackings and bottling, he told me, which means that making all that additional wine will be far less burdensome than things are right now, with smaller production. Ogier has introduced an entry-level Côte-Rôtie, by the way, and he told me that this will allow him to make an even more strict selection for his upper-tier bottlings as well as be able to offer a lower-priced wine that will provide for early drinking.