2019 Nuits Saint-Georges Village

Charles Lachaux informed me well in advance about a change in policy with regard to tastings. Henceforth, he will be showing the bottled vintage rather than the most recent one in barrel. It’s a move that I support because he is syncing it with a later release of his wines, so my notes are still timely, though this decision did raise the eyebrows of some of his neighbors in Vosne – not that he cares one jot. “All the 2019s were bottled in early May,” he explained to the gathering of six invitees. “The crop is small, though not as small as 2020, due to a heat wave that also concentrated acidity. The goblet pruning allows us to achieve phenolic ripeness faster than regular pruning. We prune six to eight buds per vine, which produces twice as much foliage. [Lachaux could not explain why the increased leaf cover does not exaggerate the sugar level.] In 2019, there was no tilling of the soil. Instead, we let the grass grow, and at one point it got so tall you could hardly see the vines. Then instead of mowing it, we roll the grass so that it lies flat on the ground. We found that this helps defend the vines against frost, raising the frosting zone, which was especially useful in 2021. Then, after the grass is rolled, we allow it to decompose so that it increases the carbon in the soil. We started picking on September 12, not necessarily only in the mornings [Lachaux aims to pick at the precise optimal moment]. The average crop is 19hl/ha with the lowest at 13hl/ha. This was the first vintage where we did not do trimming on all the vineyards, which was a big move. We just do a few punch-downs and that is enough to finish up all the sugar, using a vertical press that was introduced in 2011. Everything is 100% whole cluster and vinified with no sulfur, with free sulfur ranging from 9mg/L up to 20mg/L. We are also using less new oak, and from 2020 we have introduced ceramic tanks that are easy to clean – you just need to hose them out. We are now doing less in the winemaking process. The longest time in tank is nine days for two cuvées for the Clos de Vougeot and Latricières-Chambertin. The highest alcohol level is 13.3° in the Nuits Saint-Georges Les Proces, but most are below 13°. We use natural corks, 54mm long, that cost just under two euros per bottle. We used less than 10% new oak for the Village Crus and up to 35% for the Grand Crus.” Arnoux has radically altered the wines at this domaine for the better. He’s a bit of a disrupter to way things are done in this part of the world, and he emphasized that while he is seen as a protégé of Lalou Bize-Leroy, in fact only two or three of their practices overlap. I guess you could say it is more of an ideological meeting of minds. I admired these wines a lot. They are very à la mode with the use of whole bunch and non-interventional winemaking, inter alia, but they deliver in the glass, as proven by some 2017s ordered at Beaune restaurants during my stay.