2010 Vosne-Romanée Vieilles Vignes

Cécile Tremblay started harvesting on September 21. Like all of her colleagues, Tremblay suffered losses of 30-40% of her crop because of the weather conditions in 2010. Tremblay used 30% stems of the Echézeaux, but destemmed the fruit for all of her other wines as she didn't feel the stems were fully ripe. As always, the approach to winemaking is pretty stripped down to the bare essentials. The wines age on their lees with no rackings until they are prepared for bottling. Lastly, nearly everything you read about Cécile Tremblay makes mention that she is the grand-niece of Henri Jayer. While that fact is interesting from a historical perspective and explains the source of her holdings, it doesn't make her wines good or bad. Frankly, these wines don't need to stand on anyone else's reputation. They are exceptional in their own right. I also tasted the 2010 Vosne-Romanée Les Rouges du Dessus, a highly promising wine that was still finishing its malolactic fermentation in November 2011 and was therefore hard to read.

Cecile Tremblay was originally planning to start her 2010 harvest on September 25 but moved that date up to September 21, as the ripeness of the fruit in Vosne-Romanee Beaux-Monts and Echezeaux was quite advanced. As a result, she picked those two vineyards, plus the Chapelle-Chambertin, before more than an inch of rain fell on the 24th. Tremblay vinified with about 50% whole clusters in 2009 but destemmed all of her fruit in 2010 except for 30% of the Echezeaux because "there was not enough juice and we already had enough solid material, with thick skins." She eliminated 10% to 15% of the fruit due to the irregular ripening that was largely the result of the weather during flowering.