2022 Monthélie Village

Anne Parent is Pommard and Pommard is Parent. She lives and breathes the village, just a 30-minute jog from Beaune (as I can testify by my Sunday morning runs). Following a tasting, we exchanged candid views on what is happening in a village that struggles to retain young people who cannot afford housing while witnessing two luxury hotels, one under construction, with all the disruption that entails. In some ways, it was a sobering conversation that revealed the realities of running a domaine. Having tasted her wines for many years and having known Parent for almost a quarter of a century, I’ve seen a refinement in her winemaking techniques, and she was ebullient over her 2022s.

“The 2022 vintage started a little bit cold, so the flowering was not easy,” she began, both of us seated on either side of the table with the line of bottles between. “We had warm temperatures, but in the end, I think it’s an expressive, smooth vintage. Compared to 2020, it is very different in terms of lower acidity and softer tannins; for us, it was a normal crop in terms of volume. It was tricky to pick the date of harvest in terms of gauging phenolic maturity, and we picked from August 28. We didn’t have to sort a lot. I had two cuvées that needed to restart fermentation. The malo was finished by February when I prefer for the malo to finish in spring. The level of alcohol is around 13% to 13.5%, and of course, we didn’t have to add any sugar. Most of the wines have not been racked, and the whites will be bottled in January, the reds not before March.”

The 2022 vintage suits Parent’s style of wines that centers around Pommard with parcels in some of its most propitious Premier Crus, such as Les Chanlins and Chaponnières, both of which had slightly more precision than, say, the Les Epenots and Les Argillières. These tend to be wines with more sucrosity than their peers, perhaps a sorbet-like freshness, packed with flavor without denuding them of site typicité. Readers should also watch for a superb Corton Grand Cru Blanc, Corton-Charlemagne in all but name.