2022 Griotte-Chambertin Grand Cru

“It was quite an easy vintage apart from the storm in June when we had rain and hail around Brochon,” Pierre Duroché tells me in his tasting room. Outside, they are amidst construction work as they are building a new storage room for his bottle stock. “There was a lot of surface water, so initially, I wasn’t happy. Then, it was dry until harvest, and there was not too much hydric stress. We began picking on August 26 in Griotte-Chambertin as usual, finishing with the Chambertin, yields around 22-24hL/ha as we had to prune shorter after the hail-damaged 2021 and then again hail in 2022. The vinification was normal, just protecting the must with carbonic gas instead of sulfur during fermentation for around 15 days. The wines are in bottle for 12 months before racking, and the wines will be bottled in December. I think it is a great vintage. I think every facet is right in terms of weight, aromas, acidity and so on. It’s a consistent vintage.”

Duroché’s wines are the archetypal “less is more” take on Pinot Noir, so much so that some people make the error of pouring directly from the bottle. Trust me, these wines respond to decanting, even if they don’t appear to. This thoroughly enjoyable set of 2022s reaches its apotheosis with the Chambertin, which just has its nose in front of the Clos-de-Bèze, the latter that intuition tells me might benefit from a longer barrel maturation than in December. There are a couple of cuvées I feel need a bit more grip, such as the Etelois and Lavaut Saint-Jacques, which might have been just knocked off course by those June deluges (though the Vieilles Vignes cuvée apropos the latter is just wonderful).