2015 Vosne-Romanée Vieilles Vignes

Cecile Tremblay started harvesting in 2016 on September 22 with potential alcohol levels around 13% and did not chaptalize. While her vineyards in Morey-Saint-Denis and Gevrey-Chambertin escaped the frost, she wasn’t quite as lucky in Chambolle-Musigny and Vosne-Romanée. Her two parcels of old vines in Chambolle-Musigny Les Feusselottes were the most affected and she didn’t even bother presenting this wine as she made just one barrel.

Tremblay, the grandniece of Henri Jayer, totally destemmed her fruit à la Jayer when she started bottling her own wines in 2002 but in recent years has been making use of whole-cluster vinification to preserve the vivacity of her normally seamless wines in a warming climate. Still, she emphasized that she’s cautious about the percentage of whole clusters and used no more than 30% in 2016. She believes the ‘16s will be for drinking before her ‘15s, which she noted were “the next best agers after the 2005s.” The '16s were still in barrels, unracked, at the time of my November visit.

Like so many of her colleagues who lean toward whole-cluster fermentation to bring added freshness to their wines, Cécile Tremblay did a high percentage of vendange entier in 2015 because the stems were ripe and healthy. She began harvesting on September 8 and finished at mid-day on the 12th, about an hour before heavy rainfall began. The lowest potential alcohol level in 2015 was a relatively lofty 13.4% but that was not obvious in the wines, which Tremblay believes have “precision, suavity and great digestibility.” The post-malo pHs are in the range of 3.45 to 3.5. “It was an easy vintage, and we had the impression of doing very little,” said Tremblay. “Two thousand fifteen is a vintage of pleasure, a combination of 2005 and 2009.” Tremblay begins with a cold soak of her fruit lasting three or four days but does very little in the way of extraction during vinification.