2020 Bourgogne Rouge

Denis Bachelet is one of my shortest visits since he normally has five cuvées, though due to the larger volume in 2023, the Les Evocelles is now an additional bottling rather than being blended into Les Corbeaux. “It is the biggest vintage I have made,” he tells me. “I estimate the date of harvest by the date of flowering and that date was put back because the weather was not so good in mid-August. Then, there was the heat wave so I started the harvest on September 9 and picked over six days. Everything is destemmed, as usual. All wines are matured in 50% new oak using some of the barrels that I bought for the 2021 vintage.” This year, I found a tad more black fruit in his cuvées due to the warm July, perhaps not quite the complexity or mineralité evident in the nascent 2022s, yet with his trademark precision and pedigree. These are wines that you just want to drink and enjoy. Quantities are always small although at least there is a little more to go round in 2023, unlike in 2024 where he has around half the crop.

It is always a pleasure to visit Denis Bachelet, although I worry that he worries too much. He is rightly concerned about the changes in the growing season due to global warming, with memories of the destructive torrential rain in June 2022 fresh in his mind. “We saw some coulure after the June storms,” he tells me. “Consequently the older vines suffered some court noué. There was a bit of stress in the vines. I picked from September 1 over the next five-and-a-half days, and they will be bottled in March according to the lunar calendar. At the moment, they are not as expressive as 2020 at this stage.” I have adored Bachelet’s wines since I started buying them around the millennium, when cognoscenti mostly overlooked them. They still exude poise and refinement, an effortless quintet full of energy. They are crowned by his sublime Charmes-Chambertin from some of its oldest vines, along with Roty’s, seeming to elevate them above all else.

Denis Bachelet seems exhausted even just thinking about the 2021 season when I call in at his winery in Gevrey-Chambertin. “It was complicated with all the damage and climate,” he rues. “We had a lot of frost, and it was cold into May. The vines took time to get going, and then in June, they exploded as they tried to catch up. But I had lost more than 50% of the volume. There were only five cagettes of Evocelles. It reminds me of the frost we had back in 1981. On 22 June was the big deluge from the Combe de Lavaux that brought some hail, but it was too early in the season to do serious damage. June and July saw a lot of rain, and mildew pressure was strong. It was difficult to spray, though August saw some improvement. There was a lot of coulure, especially on the older vines that suffer degeneration [from the 161-59 clone]. I started picking on 18 September, and there were four days of harvest. The bunches were healthy, so I did not need to sort much. I did a little more extraction as the vintage was like one from the 1970s and 1080s.”

Denis Bachelet was the only visit rescued from my cancelled last week of tasting. I had to forego my baguette for lunch, but the wines were worth the sacrifice. Covid aside, the pandemic is not the only challenge that Bachelet has faced in recent months. “The summer dryness means that we are 40% down in terms of quantity,” a rueful Bachelet told me as we descended down the precariously steep steps to the barrel cellar. “There have been three consecutive dry seasons and it is beginning to affect the vines. There is just no water. In 2020 it was even less. I started picking on 14 September.” What can I say that I have not written before? From the entry Côte de Nuits-Villages up to the Charmes-Chambertin, all the 2019s bare the hallmarks of Bachelet’s style: pure red fruit aromas, stunning delineation, machine-tooled precision and bewitching grace on their finishes. The only downside is that the shortfall means there is no Les Evocelles this year.

How bloody good are Denis Bachelet’s wines? Forget points, forget the superlative for a moment. These are wines that remind you that when it comes to Pinot Noir, to quote the great Carly Simon, nobody does it better (than Burgundy). These are wines that I don’t want to write about and proselytise, I want to drink them with my best Burgundy-loving compadres. "The harvest began on 2 September and lasted for five days," Bachelet told me, once I had explained to him why I am looking a bit thinner compared to 12 months ago. "There was no rot and there was a very good maturity of grapes. It was warm during harvest so we cooled the grapes upon the arrival at the winery. Everything was destemmed as usual and the alcoholic degrees are between 12.5% and 13.2%. The surprise is that the warmth of the growing season seemed to concentrate the alcohol and the acidity at the same time." What can I say - superlative, tensile, ethereal wines and that extends from Bachelet’s entry level crus up to his eight and a quarter barrels of Charmes-Chambertin.

I think of Domaine Denis Bachelet as a perfectly formed producer. They offer a small and tidy number of crus – just five, excluding a Bourgogne Aligoté. Every cru is uniformly excellent. There is but a solitary Grand Cru to satisfy those for whom the label is important, and yet Bachelet’s Côtes de Nuits-Villages can be riveting and can age beautifully. Bachelet himself has always been a softly spoken, erudite and extremely affable fellow. Perhaps the only thing I would change is the market prices. Long gone are the days when I would regularly buy a couple of bottles of Charmes-Chambertin. But I can understand the demand given the quality.

“I started picking on September 9 or 10,” Bachelet told me in his small barrel cellar, which thankfully is less empty than in recent years. “I picked over six days, and it was straightforward - certainly less complicated than in 2018. I think the 2017s approach 2014 in terms of style.”

There’s not much to say except that Bachelet’s quintet of reds are just wonderful. Don’t obsess too much over the Charmes-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes. Even though it is utterly sublime, the eight barrels to satiate the world will doubtless make it difficult to obtain a bottle (though there is no harm in trying!) Rest assured that the Côtes de Nuits-Villages is just brilliant and both Gevrey-Chambertins, Corbeaux and Evocelles, rank among the best you will find. That is what I have come to expect from this address – no more, no less.

“I adore the style of the 2016 vintage and prefer it to 2015,” said Denis Bachelet as we began to taste his new set of wines from barrel. He finds the ‘16s tastier while the ‘15s are rather extreme, “showing power and tannic force but lacking finesse and elegance owing to the drought year.” Bachelet started harvesting in 2016 on September 24, with grape sugars in the 12% range. He chaptalized most of his wines lightly. Bachelet lost about 25% of his Charmes-Chambertin production to frost but the rest of his vineyards were barely touched. But he added that he had to treat continuously against explosive mildew until as late as August 10.

Bachelet’s is a very pure, fresh style, typically with moderate to lowish pHs (3.45 to 3.5 in both ’16 and ’15); as he brings only a moderate quantity of fine lees into the barrels, his wines are less likely to become reduced during élevage. Bachelet routinely destems his fruit, and as of the 2014 vintage he has reduced the number of pigeages to two a day until the middle of the fermentation (previously he did three punchdowns per day), then only remontages. He planned to bottle his 2016s in March, assembling them in tanks just one day before.

“I adore the style of the 2016 vintage and prefer it to 2015,” said Denis Bachelet as we began to taste his new set of wines from barrel. He finds the ‘16s tastier while the ‘15s are rather extreme, “showing power and tannic force but lacking finesse and elegance owing to the drought year.” Bachelet started harvesting in 2016 on September 24, with grape sugars in the 12% range. He chaptalized most of his wines lightly. Bachelet lost about 25% of his Charmes-Chambertin production to frost but the rest of his vineyards were barely touched. But he added that he had to treat continuously against explosive mildew until as late as August 10.

Bachelet’s is a very pure, fresh style, typically with moderate to lowish pHs (3.45 to 3.5 in both ’16 and ’15); as he brings only a moderate quantity of fine lees into the barrels, his wines are less likely to become reduced during élevage. Bachelet routinely destems his fruit, and as of the 2014 vintage he has reduced the number of pigeages to two a day until the middle of the fermentation (previously he did three punchdowns per day), then only remontages. He planned to bottle his 2016s in March, assembling them in tanks just one day before.

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.

Denis Bachelet describes 2013 as a vintage fraught with challenges, starting with a cool, rainy spring that adversely affected flowering and lowered yields. The fruit ripened during the last few weeks of September, when the sun is weaker than it is earlier in the summer. Harvest started on October 5, something that had not been seen at the domaine since the 1980s. Bachelet's 2013s capture the style of the year in their vibrant, chiseled personalities yet have plenty of the textural depth that is such a Bachelet signature. Across the board, these are very fine Burgundies.

Denis Bachelet's small cellar is stark for how empty the barrel room is. In 2012 yields are down from 30% to more than 50% for the Charmes. According to Bachelet mildew in May and bad weather during the flowering were the main culprits. Flowering was drawn out over an entire month, whereas in a normal year everything is said and done in about a week. If that wasn't bad enough, the oldest vines were affected the most by the dismal weather. As is the custom here, the wines were racked before the malos, something that is done largely because of space considerations. Even though the malos were quite late the 2012s showed beautifully. This is a gorgeous set of wines from Denis Bachelet. The heartbreak is likely to be in trying to find them.

Denis Bachelet's 2011s are just as beautiful from bottle as they were from barrel. Bachelet had to be patient in waiting to allow some of his late-ripening parcels to mature as disease pressure mounted towards the end of the harvest.

Lalou Bize-Leroy has two fabulous Grand Cru reds sitting in her tiny cellar at Domaine D'Auvenay, on the hills outside Meursault. Bize-Leroy recently added to her holdings at D'Auvenay with purchases of small parcels in Bâtard-Montrachet and the Puligny villages vineyard Les Enseignères. Both parcels are currently farmed conventionally and will be converted to biodynamic farming, which is of course standard practice at the domaine.

Denis Bachelet farms four hectares of vineyards, which are just enough to produce about 20,000 bottles of wine per year. Many of the vineyards are old, which contributes to a house style built on power and textural richness.