2015 Nuits Saint-Georges Village

Pascal Lachaux's son Charles has made a host of changes in the vineyards and in the winery in just the past three or four years and Pascal has been smart enough to give him free rein. The Arnoux-Lachaux '15s hold out the promise to be the best wines made at this estate in a generation.

The estate has changed its approach to canopy management, pruning tall and late one month after the flowering, which Charles says provides the vines with twice as many leaves. The enhanced photosynthesis, he added, allows the estate to harvest a week earlier than their neighbors. (In 2015, they started picking on September 4 and finished in four days.) Charles began vinifying with a significant proportion of whole clusters in 2012 and in 2015 he used a minimum of 70% in all of his cuvées, including 100% in seven different wines. The pHs of the wines made with a substantial percentage of vendange entierare in the rather high 3.7 range. But Lachaux noted that the whole clusters offer the advantage of slowing the fermentations, which now go no higher than 29 degrees C. The result, he went on, is more red fruits than black, which has given his 2015s an impression of vibrancy. “With vendange entier, we’re making less use of a recipe,” explained Lachaux. “We’re just working by taste. We’re making wines more with our guts, in the hope that they will speak with more emotion. Today we’re getting back to classic wines using modern tools. And we're making the style of wines we like to drink." Beginning with the 2014s, Lachaux is filtering only the bottoms of the tanks at bottling.

Yields were down 50% in 2015 due to more grass between the rows. "The cover crop helped to suck up water in 2014 and 2013," Lachaux explained, "but it hurt us in the dry 2015 season." Yields were barely 25 to 30 hectoliters per hectare in the family’s village holdings, around 20 in its premier crus, and just 16 to 18 in its grand crus.