2011 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru

The Arlaud brothers handled 2011 masterfully, bringing in fruit with a degree less potential alcohol than usual, chaptalizing only up to half a degree, and vinifying with an especially light hand. We did a one-week cold soak and a coolish fermentation (30 degrees C. "at maximum"), then four days of post-maceration fermentation, said Cyprien Arlaud. "It was important to wait for good maturity of the tannins before picking," he added, but he did a lighter extraction because he was "not 100% confident about the phenolic material." Each cuvee was punched down only three times in total. Incidentally, Arlaud credits his Paris-based expat American broker Peter Vezan for his coaching efforts in recent years. The result, he told me, has been steady progression in the quality of work in the cellar, especially in terms of when and how much SO2 to use and when to bottle. No 2011s were yet racked at the time of my mid-November visit.