2017 Meursault Clos du Cromin

Among other recent refinements in their techniques, the Bachelet brothers have been steadily cutting back on their percentage of new oak in recent years. “We don’t like the sweetness it adds to the wines,” explained Marc Bachelet, and in fact these wines now finish very dry. The Bachelets don’t practice batonnage and beginning in 2016 they’ve been crushing the grapes for a couple of their cuvées, particularly their premier crus, as that step “liberates the juice and gives the wines more texture and finesse,” according to Marc.

The Bachelets started harvesting on August 28 in 2017 with their Bourgogne Blanc, and were mostly finished before the substantial rainfall on September 2. Yields for the crus ranged from 35 to 40 hectoliters per hectare, and potential alcohol levels were mostly between 12.5% and 13.2%. Some of the post-malo 2017s still have 4.5 per liter acidity, said Alexandre Bachelet.