2012 Romanée-Saint-Vivant Grand Cru

Two thousand twelve was a vintage of transition at this estate, as Pascal Lachaux's young son Charles began vinifying the family's wines with a significant percentage of whole clusters. The vintage also featured a tiny crop here, down 40% to 70% from normal depending on the cru. Charles believes that the 2012s will be best consumed after the 2013s "or at the same time." As the 2012s finished their malolactic fermentations early, all of the wines were bottled by the end of February, 2014.

Under the influence of his young son Charles, who has spent time making wine in Oregon, New Zealand and Australia, Pascal Lachaux moved rather decisively in the direction of whole-cluster vinification in 2012, and is now relying more on pumpovers than punchdowns to keep the cap wet during the fermentation.Long-time clients of this domain may find the new style a bit of a shock but as there was generally very good phenolic ripeness in this late year, Lachaux's use of stems has mostly worked well in 2012.For his part, he believes that this technique has yielded rounder wines with more sucrosite and aromatic complexity.Lachaux continues to like "the purity of a lot of new oak and early bottling," as he fears that a long time on the lees can bring "aromatic deviation."The malos in 2012 finished relatively early, in February and March of 2013, but only the first couple of wines in the range had been racked in November.Most of my samples came from new barrels, as they were generally less reduced than the wine in older pieces.As a general rule, production was down 40% in 2012, with the Suchots the hardest-hit during the flowering, down 70%.