2015 Echézeaux Grand Cru

Louis-Michel Liger-Belair considers 2016 to be “a great Burgundy-style vintage: ripe but not overripe, with medium weight and lovely freshness like old Burgundy vintages.” Of course vine yields were another matter entirely, with frost and some mildew limiting estate-wide production to just 22 hectoliters per hectare, with the range from as little as 4.5 to 32. Liger-Belair harvested in six days, beginning on September 24. He vinified several--but not all--of his crus with a portion of whole clusters, retaining the small bunches with small, well-aerated berries. He chaptalized his wines about half a degree, noting that the ‘16s now have about 13.5% alcohol.

All of the wines I tasted are aging in 100% new oak (only the Clos du Château had been racked), although Liger-Belair is now using some 350-liter barrels for his village wines. Incidentally, the 2015s I tasted from bottle in November were showing well—surprisingly so, noted Liger-Belair, who believes that “for such a big vintage, it's unreasonable to think that the wines will show well during the year after the bottling.”

Two thousand fifteen was Louis-Michel Liger-Belair’s 16th vintage, and he told me that it was hard to compare it with any other year. “The wines are fresher than the 2009s and better balanced than the 2005s,” he told me in November. “They were closed at the beginning and are just now starting to open, which is a good sign. I think they will age very well.”

Liger-Belair harvested between September 5 and 10 and the wines are all between 13% and 13.5% alcohol without chaptalization. Liger-Belair told me he did pumpovers early each morning but only two punchdowns at the beginning of the fermentations--“and that was it.” He vinified his crus with about 20% whole clusters, which he described as a bit more than usual. Some wines spent as many as 25 days in vat, also a bit longer than average for wines at this address. Other than the Vosne-Romanée Clos du Château, the 2015s were still in barrels in November and had not been sulfured since the harvest.

Incidentally, all of the wines I tasted were in 100% new barrels, which is now an exception in Burgundy. When I asked Liger-Belair about his continued preference for new oak, he responded that “even with one-year-old barrels, my wines are too reduced; there’s not enough exchange with air. Plus, the cost of a new barrel works out to only one euro per bottle.”