2021 Clos du Clocher

Jean-Baptiste Bourotte was unable to meet when I tasted his portfolio at Michel Rolland’s laboratory, but new winemaker Mathieu Bronté filled me in. “It was a difficult season for all the winemakers. We had some frost, but not much in Clos du Clocher, more on the lower parts of the vineyard in the plain. We lost 50% in some places. There was a bit of coulure as well. There was a lot of rain in June, 180mm in one month, double the normal amount. Clos du Clocher is in the first year of organic conversion, and this actually worked well as you are often in the vineyard. Copper sulphate seemed to work well. We now use grass as a cover crop between rows, working with humus to create more biodiversity and this helped drain the water and made driving the tractors easier. We de-leafed one side of the vines in June and then the other side in August, just like we did 15 years ago. For the healthy fruit, we could wait for ripeness to come in September, for example, we picked the Cabernet Franc at Clos du Clocher on 14 October. For the vinification, we were close to 13% potential alcohol with 3.5-3.6 in pH, more like 2014, yet the phenolic analysis of the tannins meant that extraction was more difficult. If you extracted at the end of the alcoholic fermentation, you could get some astringency, so we just mixed the juice in the second half so that the yeast could keep working. We decreased the malo in barrel to 10-15% to keep the fruit. We have a new cellarmaster that transferred from Malartic-Lagravière who is striving towards a more reductive élevage, using more nitrogen so we can use less SO2.”