2023 Gevrey-Chambertin Cherbaudes 1er Cru

It was a pleasure to meet the coolest dude in Gevrey, Louis Fourrier, Jean-Marie’s son, who is completing his studies in winemaking and taking a more active role in the running of the domaine. Fourrier père was at the bank. They had just opened their new tasting room that obviously makes it more comfortable to taste, equipped with a video screen. I asked him to guide us through the holdings that readers should find in the media section on Vinous.

“We did not do any green harvesting because of our old vines and our pruning,” Fourrier told me. “We had good sanitary conditions, except a tiny amount of mildew. The rain before the harvest increased the juice and the heatwaves were important to obtain ripeness. We started picking on September 7 and harvested over five days. We had to pick quickly. We destemmed all the bunches and then we added around 20% stems that would have the capacity to be absorbed during pigeage and just enhance the tannins. The vinification went well, the only challenge being to keep the fruit cool. We used closed lorries to transport the fruit, and we put it directly into the sorter. The natural sugar levels for the Premier Crus are around 13.5%. The yields are 38-50 hl/ha. The cuvées are aged in around 20% new oak from the Cadus cooperage and we started using ceramic amphora.”

This was a fascinating range from Fourrier. As Louis Fourrier commented in the video, their objective was toward a lighter and more elegant style and in that respect, as someone that has been tasting their wines since the late 1990s, these might wrong-foot some aficionados. Think Rousseau of present-day Dugat… foot off the accelerator. They might seem slight at first acquaintance, but they are discrete and gain weight with aeration, far more nuanced than the previous vintage. They’ll make fascinating bedfellows.