2015 Meursault En La Barre

It was too early to taste Antoine Jobard’s 2016s, as the wines were still in the middle of their malolactic fermentations at the beginning of June. Jobard told me that it was very difficult to treat the vineyards in 2016 due to all the moisture in the soil in late spring and that he eventually had very little production and used no new oak barrels as there were so many tiny cuvées. “The wines have finesse but not a lot of material, and new oak would have dominated them,” he explained. He compared the '16s to his 2013s, “but with less acidity.”

I focused my attention on Jobard’s set of 2015s, which had been bottled during the weeks prior to my visit. Jobard told me that he’s “very optimistic about the 2015s,” adding that “it’s not an atypical vineyard but one of good ripeness—a bit like 2012 and fairly classic Burgundy.” He says the wines have "the iodiney side that brings one back for another glass." Jobard shortened his élevage in oak for the '15s in order to preserve freshness, and to bring a bit of reduction, noting that he thought the family’s wines in 2009 and 2003 were bottled a bit too late.

Antoine Jobard assured me that he hasn’t strayed from the vinification or extraction techniques practiced by his father François Jobard, but he noted that in 2014 he had to carry out a light filtration (the domain had stopped filtering 20 years ago). He’s always in search of greater precision, he told me. “Two thousand fifteen was plenty hot,” he told me, “but there was less drought stress than in 2003, as we benefitted from strategic rains in 2015. The wines are opulent but not exotic and the grapes were very ripe but perfectly clean."

Jobard bottled his 2014s at the beginning of May and will probably bottle the ‘15s even earlier—“as early as December or January, to preserve freshness and avoid heaviness.” In comparison, his father often bottled his top cuvées at the end of the second summer. My notes on Jobard’s young 2015s are provisional in nature and I have left out several of them as they were either very reduced or still fermenting their sugars at the time of my visit. Except for the Poruzots, production levels for the premier crus were healthy in 2015, but Jobard’s village parcels were still suffering the after-effects of the June 28 hailstorm in 2014.