2015 Pommard Les Frémiers 1er Cru

Estate manager/enologist Yves Confuron didn’t start harvesting here until October 5, which surely made him one of the last pickers on the Côte de Beaune. As is his usual habit, he remonstrated against early pickers (and underripe tomatoes, while he was on the subject). “Yes, those wines show Pinot fruitiness but they are not wines that convey terroir or offer much longevity,” he maintained. Confuron must wait for full stem ripeness here (as well as at his family estate, Domaine Confuron-Côtetidot, in Vosne-Romanée) because he vinifies entirely with whole bunches and doesn’t even own a destemmer. Plus, he noted, tannins tend to be harder in Pommard than in Volnay due to the influence of three combes. "We need hot years to get fully ripe tannins, and in cooler years we have no choice but to wait.”

Domaine de Courcel lost more than half of its crop to frost and the grapes that remained came in with potential alcohol levels between 13% and 13.5%; the post-malo pHs are in the high 3.7 to 3.72 range. Some of these parameters may seem a bit extreme, but these are among the most promising ‘16s from the Côte de Beaune, with aromatic breadth, textural depth and plush tannins that can compete with top wines from the Côte de Nuits.

As ripe and rich as the Domaine de Courcel 2015s are, Confuron says they’re not typical of the vintage “due to their perfect balance,” although he admitted that the drought in late-summer made the wines a bit tight. He finds the aromas to be riper in ’15 than in ’16 but the tannins a bit less refined. “But the ‘15s have wonderful density with lift,” he added.

The Côte de Beaune produced very concentrated wines in 2015, said manager/enologist Yves Confuron, “but the balance of these wines is even more impressive. The ‘15s are riper than the 2007s and deeper than the 2010s but with similar tension and purity,” he added. All of the fruit here was picked very late, after more than three inches of rain fell between September 12 and 17, but the three combes that chill Pommard prevented rot from taking hold, said Confuron. The wines were still in barrel, unracked, at the time of my November visit.

Incidentally, Domaine de Courcel typically replaces its vines as they die, rather than pulling out entire sections of the vineyards for replanting. The advantage of this approach, noted Confuron, is that “the sweetness of the young-vines fruit can balance the extraction of tannins from the old vines, which are also lower in sugar.”