2017 Meursault Les Perrières 1er Cru

Dominique Lafon was a little tardy for our 2pm rendezvous. When he finally materialized he told me that he had been at the police station as his car had been stolen at lunchtime. I presume that the robbers were hoping there were a few bottles of Montrachet on the back seat. Once he had gathered himself, we set upon a fairly comprehensive tasting that included his Mâconnais, bottled at the end of July and end of August, as small compensation for being unable to cover the region this year, with several bottled 2017s. "The 2017 Volnays were bottled in early Spring but they were naturally clear. I do not like the effect of filtration and so none of them were filtered. The 2018 reds were cropped at 35-45hl/ha. I used 3gm/L of SO2 before Christmas and kept the wines at 23gm/L over the summer, adding 1gm before summer. The wines have not been racked, which is what we usually do if there is no reduction. The 2018 whites were harvested from 24 August."

Following the tiny crop of 2016, Dominique Lafon finally has some wine in ’17, including five barrels of Montrachet. In fact, he thought the full crop load turned out to be a positive thing in ’17, as the grapes “didn’t change as fast or get as high in alcohol” as they otherwise might have in the very warm August conditions. “There’s nothing green about the ripeness in 2017,” he said, “but the wines are not overripe either.” Like a number of his colleagues in Meursault, he started harvesting early (August 28), with potential alcohol levels mostly between 12.5% and 13%, and he described his post-malo wines as a bit lower in acidity than his ‘16s and ‘15s. At the beginning of June, Lafon’s ‘17s displayed terrific richness as well as the elegance of the vintage’s finer examples.