2020 Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru

Mortet is one of the producers I had to sacrifice in 2020: my visit was canceled as France went into lockdown, and I had to return to England. So I was eager to see Arnaud Mortet again and check out his latest vintage, both domaine and négoce, under his own name. “I started picking on August 26 so that there was not too much sugar,” he told me. “The tannins were very ripe and so we began. I have used a small percentage of whole bunch for Premier and Grand Cru since 2019, snipping the bunch into five or six [what you might call ‘mini-bunches’] with the central stem removed. We had a lot of millerandage, so I tried to remove around 75% of the stems. The alcohol levels are around 13.0° with some cuvées just below. In the beginning I preferred the 2019s, as the class of the 2020s was not evident at the beginning, but now I love 2020. It’s quite gourmand, not powerful. Most of the wines will be bottled from the end of February using Trescases natural corks that are individually analyzed.” This was a deeply impressive set of 2020s from Mortet, quite intense and almost sorbet-like in freshness. They usually veer toward the black side of the fruit spectrum – unlike, say, Armand Rousseau or Dugat – and are perhaps stylistically more similar to Dugat-Py. These were all outstanding, from Village to Grand Crus, but especially the Mazoyères-Chambertin. Only the Echézeaux, a métayage shared with Christophe Roumier, was missing a little flesh on the finish.