2015 Gevrey-Chambertin Les Evocelles en Foule

Winemaker Pierre Vincent showed me a superb set of 2015s at Domaine de la Vougeraie in mid-December and then informed me that he was leaving his position the following week to become régisseur at Domaine Leflaive. Vincent vinified the Domaine de la Vougeraie 2015 reds, except for the entry-level Pinot Noir Terre de Famille, entirely with whole clusters as, he told me, “the grapes, stems and seeds were ripe and perfectly healthy.” The estate harvested its Pinot Noir between September 4 and 15, with only their parcels on the Hautes-Côtes brought in after the rain on September 12 and 13. Potential alcohol levels were mostly between 12% and 12.5%--though a bit higher for a couple of the grand crus—and Vincent chaptalized most of the wines about 0.3%. He did very little in the way of punchdowns (a maximum of three pigeages), then carried out a shorter cuvaison than usual (17 to 20 days, vs. 20 to 25) owing to less post-fermentation maceration. Incidentally, maximum fermentation temperatures at Domaine de la Vougeraie are normally about 28 degrees, as Vincent does not heat the tanks. None of the finished 2015s will exceed 13% alcohol, said Vincent.

Vincent has dramatically reduced his use of new barrels in recent vintages. In 2010 he aged the Vougeraie grand crus in as much as 80% new oak but he used just one-third new barrels across the board for his 2015s, with the objective of highlighting terroir differences more clearly by removing a major winemaking variable. Several of the 2015s had been bottled by the time of my December visits; those that were still in fûts had been racked in early summer.

Vincent described the 2015s as “like a blend of 2010 and 2009,” combining the ripe sweet fruit of the former vintage with some of the tension of the latter. As I had been expressing a similar view of the better 2015s with numerous winemakers during my cellar visits in November and December, I was very interested to hear Vincent make the same comparison on the penultimate evening of my December tour.

Bachelet picked during the sweet spot of the 2015 harvest, from September 5 to 10. Grape sugars were moderate (his Bourgogne was the only vineyard to reach 13%) and Bachelet chaptalized lightly to prolong the fermentations. “We would have needed more rain to get higher degrees of potential alcohol,” he told me, noting that his vines on sandy soil in Gevrey-Chambertin La Justice (which go into his Gevrey-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes bottling) were the most affected by drought stress in 2015. As is his usual habit, Bachelet totally destemmed his fruit. “I never follow fashion,” he explained. The wines had been racked in early June after the malolactic fermentations but were still in barrel in December.

Bachelet believes that the ‘15s will age for a long time but that they will be accessible earlier than the 2005s, which had more astringent tannins. While they were a bit less fleshy than I would have expected from this very rich vintage, Bachelet's distinctly elegant '15s boast electric energy and finish gripping but not dry.