2013 Chassagne-Montrachet Village

The Bachelet brothers are happy with the 2014 vintage, which they said brought grapes with little juice and a lot of dry extract but fairly low potential alcohol levels in the 12% to 12.3% range (they chaptalized their wines to about 13%). But Alexandre noted that "today we can get surmaturité at 12.5% potential alcohol." According to Alexandre, he and his brother Marc stopped doing batonnage in 2009; as a result, he added, their wines are more precise nowadays but less accessible early. They have also steadily increased their use of 350-liter barrels, now utilizing this larger format for about two-thirds of their wines. As of 2013, they are now using wax to seal the their crus and have accordingly reduced the level of free sulfur at bottling to 35 parts per million.

Marc Bachelet described the 2013s as "elegant wines but less dense than the 2014s," asking rhetorically, "are the 2014s better? I don't know. Certainly the 2013s will taste good early."

Marc and Alexandre Bachelet made an immediate splash with their first set of white Burgundies back in vintage 2005, and they have steadily refined their techniques since then.They stopped stirring the lees several years ago and have been gradually cutting back on their use of new oak.They're also picking sooner, having been happy with the decision to harvest earlier in 2009.And today they're more relaxed about bottling:the 2012s weren't finished until April of this year, after spending seven months in stainless steel tanks.According to Alexandre Bachelet, the brothers started harvesting on September 25 in 2013, with the fruit coming in with potential alcohol of 11.8% and up; all of the wines were chaptalized.They pressed strongly in 2013, as there was no rot, according to Alexandre.Note that a few 2013s had not yet finished their malolactic fermentations at the time of my annual visit.