2016 Pinot Noir Côteaux Nobles

Luc and Jodie Morlet do so many things well. I was particularly impressed with the Pinot Noirs this year. In fact, I have a slight preference for 2017 over 2016 in both Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, as I find the wines have a bit more focus. Readers should note that the Morlet Chardonnays can be cloudy in the glass, as they are neither fined nor filtered. Lastly, this year the Morlets are introducing second labels for both their white and red Bordeaux programs that will make these wines more accessible from a pricing perspective than they have been in the past.

There are a lot of highlights in this range from Luc and Jodie Morlet. Before focusing on specific wines, one thing that is clear is that over the last few years Luc Morlet has given his wines greater emphasis on freshness, but he has done that gradually, in such a way that the wines' essential personalities remain pretty much as they have always been. That's all to say that these are gorgeous, sumptuous wines built on serious textural richness, but with a bit more nuance than in the past, a pretty appealing combination in my book. The 2015s are all marked by lower yields of around 30% for the Chardonnays and Cabernets to as much as 50% for the Pinots. One of the consequences of vintages like 2015 where yields are abnormally low is that the wine's aren't always as differentiated as they can be. That is certainly the case with the 2015 Chardonnays, for example. The Pinots and Cabernets appear less affected, but I did not taste the 2016s for comparison, as I did with the Chardonnays. Even so, this is a stellar set of new and upcoming releases by any measure.