2015 Marsannay Les Longeroies

Arnaud Mortet considers 2015 to be a great--and easy--vintage. He started harvesting early, on September 3, to maintain freshness, noting that "I never saw grapes of this quality before; the berries had riper skins and more sugar than in 2005. It was hot but it was not a drought year. And the leaves did not fall by harvest-time, like they did in 2007 and 2003." Quantities were "normal but not large," and potential alcohol levels ranged from 12.7% to 13.7%; Mortet told me he only chaptalized his Lavaux-Saint-Jacques. As color was easy to extract due to healthy levels of tartaric acidity in the grapes, Mortet did only five or six punchdown per cuvée in 2015. Still, he predicts that his 2015s will be closed during their first ten years in the bottle.