2018 Chassagne-Montrachet Les Caillerets 1er Cru

Winemaker and possibly the most photogenic man in Burgundy, Sébastien Caillat, remains a winemaker flying under-the-radar at a high altitude, a vigneron who together with his wife Florence, is pushing the envelop of what can be achieved in an appellation that in recent years has spawned a new crop of winemakers that have had enough of Meursault or Puligny-Montrachet grabbing the limelight. “I started the picking on 10 September in [Chassagne] Champs Gain, where I was concerned about the richness,” Caillat told me in his cosy, almost grotto-like tasting room just down from his cuverie. “The yields are small at around 25-30hl/ha. I use an old mechanical Vaslin press and it took five or six hours to complete because there was so little juice in the berries. It was a surprising year with around 14 degrees of natural alcohol with good acidity levels that seemed to concentrate during the growth cycle. There is a little more tartaric in 2019 compared to 2018. I was amazed that whilst the 2018s are 12 to 13 degrees of alcohol, they took a long time to finish their malolactic whereas the 2019 finished without much problem. I just had to open the doors to the vat-room when it became warm in July.” Caillat’s latest releases have so much nerve – remarkable considering the growing season in question. His Chassagne-Montrachet La Grande Montagne is scintillating in terms of its coiled-up energy whilst his Chassagne-Montrachet Pot Bois nudges Premier Cru quality. I concur with Caillat that maybe his 2019s will have an edge over his 2018s; though they are no slouches either. It is onwards and upwards.

There are two winemakers in Chassagne-Montrachet who are absolutely killing it at the moment: Alexandre Moreau (Domaine Bernard Moreau) and this man, Sébastien Caillat (Domaine Lamy-Caillat). If you think that Chassagne-Montrachet cannot offer as much profundity as the finest Meursault or Puligny-Montrachet, then you have not tasted these wines. They are produced in tiny quantities, but that does not mean that you should not try to get your mitts on a few bottles. "We started picking the whites around 3 to 6 September using the same team that picks Lamy-Pillot," Caillat informed me in his small cellar just up the road from Ramonet. "The entire harvest [including Lamy-Pillot] took around 10 days. We had quite a high oïdium pressure during the season but after it was very warm. Frost threatened but in the end we did not have any, so overall it was a relatively easy vintage as the grapes were very healthy. The alcoholic fermentation was more difficult because was always at risk of stopping [due to higher alcohol levels.] So I blended barrels together and put them into vat and then racked them back into barrel to restart the fermentation. There is no chaptalisation in 2018 but there was a little in 2017. I am finding that the 2018s are becoming more "strict" in their second winter." Tasting both his 2017s in bottle and 2018s in barrel, this was a short but thrilling ride through Chardonnays brimming over with tension and energy. Lamy-Caillat is rapidly attaining cult status and I might be fueling that here, so I will leave it there.