2016 Puligny-Montrachet Les Enseigneres

Veteran Jean-Claude Ramonet makes no claims for greatness for either the 2016 or 2017 white Burgundies, so I feel a bit out on a limb by rating his wines higher than he apparently does. Ramonet considers 2016 to be a fragile vintage, "especially for the frosted vineyards," and will bottle his wines with a full 35 parts per million of sulfur. Perhaps more important, he feels that the frosted 2016s "lack something." I enjoyed the '16s for their energy but I do wonder if some of them will expand and gain in pliancy and complexity in bottle like the best vintages at this address. And, as in some other cellars, especially in Chassagne-Montrachet, a few of these wines finish with a faint bitterness that may reflect the influence of some less-ripe second-generation grapes. But the best '16s here are standouts, and they appear destined for a slow and positive evolution in the cellar.

Raphaël Coche was not ready to present his young 2017 white wines on my late-spring tour but he had some interesting comments about this vintage. He asserted that 2017s show "very particular aromas all over France," mentioning "fresh green notes" as well as "almost Jura-like vegetal and oxidation notes." The wines are in a very singular style, he concluded, and we need to wait longer to pass judgment on these wines.

As to vintage 2016, Coche told me that a number of his family's parcels lost more than 50% of their normal crop, "and the Meursault Chevalières was killed." But because there were no second-generation grapes, we had fairly consistent ripeness," although he later admitted that some '16s "were not really physiologically ripe at the harvest." He added that back in 1981, another year with a terrible frost, his father Jean-François vinified with the second-generation grapes and there was thus a wide range of ripeness in the material. Still, Coche père et fils made a few stunning--and surprisingly classic--wines in 2016, and they are likely to be among the stars of the vintage. All of the '16s were bottled in March and April of this year.