2010 Montrachet Grand Cru

I was deeply impressed with the wines I tasted at Fontaine-Gagnard. The 2010s are rich, deep and racy, but also show tremendous transparency with regards to site and have a little more polish than is customary. Céline Fontaine told me she was very surprised by the concentration of the wines given the poor weather during the summer, but that, ultimately, it was the small size of the berries that played a big role in giving the wines their personalities. The harvest started on September 21. All of the 2010s were bottled in August 2011. Although I did not taste any of the reds, Fontaine also told me a number of the estate's Pinot vineyards were heavily affected by the December 2009 frost and required replanting.

Richard Fontaine's take on the 2010 vintage was a bit different than the opinions expressed by his peers in Chassagne-Montrachet. "The wines are round and flattering, more like 2009 than 2008," he told me. "The 2008s were a lot more taut in the early going." Crop levels in 2010 were down an average of 20% for chardonnay, but Fontaine said that pinot yields were "even worse." He was in the middle of racking his 2010s when I visited at the beginning of June and he planned to bottle the new vintage, as usual, before the 2011 harvest. "People who put their wines in tank for six months just want to be able to take their summer vacation," he told me.