2018 Savigny-lès-Beaune Vieilles Vignes

After a brief hiatus, it is a pleasure to return to this Domaine in Savigny-lès-Beaune, just up from Domaine Bize to meet winemakers Caroline and Juliette Chenu. This small Domaine has been certified organic since 2015 and the sisters told me that this made it a bit “tricky” with oïdium. “The 2018 and 2019 vintages remind me of 2009 and 2010. We had a bit of frost but we did not see it at the time. It was quite rainy in spring and in summer the temperature reached 41°C. There was no rain at all before harvest. The maturity came in September and we started picking on 14 September, by then we had the same phenolic ripeness as the previous year. We cropped at around 35hl/ha, about one-third less than 2018 though that was a large crop. The whites production is particularly small in 2019. The vinification was normal and there were no problems finishing the sugar after fermentation. The whites were bottled just before harvest as we use the same barrels for each vintage.” This was a fine set of wines from the Chenu sisters, capped by an excellent Savigny-lès-Beaune Les Haut Jarrons and an almost flinty, tensile Les Lavières.

It was a pleasure to return to Savigny producer Louis Chenu after a hiatus of three or four years and meet Caroline and Juliette Chenu who run the domaine. Their winery is located just up the road from Domaine Bize, literally in the shadow of the A6 autoroute. "In 2010 we started converting our 9.5-hectares of vineyard to organic and from 2012 it turned 100% organic, which was certified in 2015," Caroline told me as we settled down to taste the 2018 vintage. I asked her more about the vintage under the spotlight. "It was quite difficult choosing the date of harvest in 2018. We started the harvest on 31 August and finished around eight days later. We did not do any pigeage for the first time in 2018 because the wine was so pleasant. We were afraid to add something aggressive into the wine, so we just did remontage for all the red cuvées. The density was already there so the extraction was easy. We needed to keep the freshness as it had been a warm vintage. All the wines are around 13% natural alcohol with no chaptalization, which will be the same for 2019. The wines are generally more approachable than in 2017."