2021 Echézeaux Grand Cru

“The harvest was very complicated,” Emmanuel Rouget tells me in his cellar in Gilly. “It was hard getting pickers during COVID-19. I started on 22 September, but you had to find the bunches. It was not that warm, but there was no rain during picking. The fermentation was slightly slower during the 21-day cuvaison period during which we did pigeage as usual, though not as hard as in other years. I just did one per day, alternating with remontage.” Broaching the style of the wines with Rouget, he tells me: “There is fine freshness and persistence, but there is a lot of reduction in the barrels at the moment. The Savigny and Chorey-lès-Beaune were racked in July.” Then perhaps the sentence that highlights the contrast between two vintages more than any other during my six-week stay… “The highest degree in alcohol in 2021 was 14% whereas in 2020 it was the minimum.”