1979 Pommard Epenots 1er Cru

“There was no hydric stress in the vines,” proprietor Christine Gruère-Fontaine tells me as we commence the tasting through their 2022s with her daughter Clémentine. Christine took the reins back in 1991, always chatty and with a witty sense of humor. “We started the harvest on August 25 and picked over the next nine days. It was an excellent vintage, with pretty much no sorting, good sugar levels between 13% and 14% for the reds and a little less for the whites, around 12% and 13.0% in alcohol. We had a good quantity of yields, around 40-45hL/ha for the reds and between 50-55hL/ha for the whites. The yields for the whites are actually bigger in 2023. We do one pump over per day for the first five days; then we move to one punch down per day for several days, then back to daily pump overs over the total maceration time of 17 or 18 days. We bought three concrete eggs that we are using to vinify the white Pernand-Vergelesses and Savigny Premier Cru. I’m not a fan of new oak. It’s a good Burgundian vintage because it is fresh but not implicitly powerful.”

Following the strong showings of 2022s from my previous two visits in nearby Savigny-lès-Beaune at Bize and Chandon des Briailles, the pressure was on for Dubreuil-Fontaine to maintain the momentum. These wines did. In fact, after many years of tasting at this address, I felt a step up in the quality of precision and finesse. Having been hit hard in 2021, these 2022s exuded freshness and typicité at a level not reached before. The sweet spots are yet another excellent Pernand-Vergelesses Ile de Vergelesses, a fantastic, highly seductive Corton-Bressandes Grand Cru. I never expected the Aloxe-Corton Les Vercots to deliver such elegance. The whites had already been bottled and crowned by a poised Savigny-lès-Beaune Les Vergelesses. At the lower rankings, they tend to be approachable wines, with perhaps only the Pommard Epenots not quite reaching their full potential.