2012 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru

Pierre-Yves Colin told me that favored chardonnay sites were ripe by September 26 or 27 and that he "picked most of the good stuff" by the Friday night before the major rainfall, then waited until the following Monday (October 7) for the vines to dry out.He describes the young '13s as "frank and fine, with a cool aspect" and places them between 2004 and 2007 in style.Interestingly, he found that the wines that finished their malos early lacked eclat and thus he blocked 20% to 30% of the secondary fermentations in his remaining wines.The grand crus will be bottled with 12.6% to 12.8% alcohol following about 0.5% chaptalization, with the village wines weighing in at about 12.2%.Colin did no debourbage or batonnage, and the wines were still on their lees at the end of May but had been lightly sulfured two weeks prior to my visit.Colin considers 2012 to be "a millesime de garde between 2009 and 2010 in style."He was worried about overripeness in the early going but believed that a long elevage on the lees brought greater freshness to the wines. (A Daniel Johnnes Selection; imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, www.skurnikwines.com; also imported by Atherton Wine Imports, www.awiwine.com)

Pierre-Yves Colin did a long pressing of the grapes in 2012 and then hardly any cold settling of the must, starting with less of the gross lees and then avoiding lees-stirring.The wines, he told me, were less protected by SO2 at the time of my annual visit than the 2011s had been a year earlier.The 2012s are thicker and richer than the 2011s, with yields generally down 20% in the newer vintage.The 2012s I tasted at the beginning of June had finished their malos at least a month before my visit and had been sulfited, but a number of other 2012s at this address were still in the middle of their secondary fermentations and not ready to be shown.As part of his efforts to prevent his wines from prematurely oxidizing, Colin uses wider, untreated corks, always makes his last sulfur additions two months prior to bottling so that the wines are stable, and uses beeswax on the capsules to seal the corks.He has also gone largely to 350-liter barrels:they account for about 80% of his annual production of roughly 60,000 bottles. (A Daniel Johnnes Selection, www.danieljohnneswines.com; imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, www.skurnikwines.com and Atherton Imports, www.awiwine.com)