2015 Vosne-Romanée Champs Perdrix

The rain on August 6 brought the grapes back to a state of equilibrium following the drought conditions in July and saved the 2015 harvest, said Bruno Clair, who added that there were two subsequent “key” rains in August. “But we didn’t have a lot of grapes and they never got large,” he noted, and the estate ultimately produced the equivalent of half a normal crop.

Clair started harvesting with his Bonnes-Mares on September 5 and needed two weeks to pick. Grape sugars were mostly between 12.5% and 13%, with some even higher. The harvest was “perfectly clean” and the estate vinified with a higher percentage of whole clusters than normally. The malolactic fermentations finished relatively quickly, during the winter, and Clair expected to bottle the bulk of his 2015s in April of 2017. “The wines have complexity, charm and drive,” Clair summarized, “and they are not austere.”

Incidentally, Clair took back the remainder of his Bonnes-Mares in 2016 and now works 1.45 hectares of vines in this grand cru. All of his land is in Chambolle-Musigny, except for a small band of vines next to Clos de Tart.