2015 Meursault Tessons Clos de Mon Plaisir

David Croix, who vinified the 2016s at Maison Camille Giroud before leaving his long-time position there to join Jean-Marc Roulot at the beginning of this year, was not able to show me the estate’s 2016 whites as the wines were still finishing their malos and were hard to read. The ‘15s, on the other hand, had been bottled between February and April and were not yet showing any signs of shutting down. According to Croix, “it’s hard to say if 2015 is a classic year, but it’s unique in the sense of having both ripeness and energy.” He went on: “In 2015 the fruit is broad and open but not overripe or heavy. We find some white fruits and pear, not just yellow fruits like in 2009.”

As is his normal practice, Jean-Marc Roulot picked early in 2015, starting on August 28. The finished wines have 13.3% to 13.7% alcohol without chaptalization and total acidity levels are in the very healthy 4.3 to 4.5 grams-per-liter range. Roulot uses just 15% to 18% new oak for his various village wines and 20% to 33% for his premier crus.

Jean-Baptiste Bouzereau described his young 2016 whites as “rather classic wines, a pleasant surprise after a very complicated year.” The rain in September—Bouzereau said 40 millimeters fell between September 13 and 19—really saved the harvest and brought better balance in the wines, he added. And quality here was more consistent than in many other cellars “because nothing was really wiped out by frost.” Bouzereau picked from September 21 through 29, with grape sugars ranging from 12.2% to 13%, chaptalizing the lighter wines by a half degree.

The alcoholic fermentations finished by the end of December and the malos in March and April (the wines had been sulfited three or four weeks before my visit). Bouzereau told me that since he moved into his current cellar in 2009, the fermentations have finished “dry and well.” He did more frequent—but light--batonnages for the ‘16s than in recent years, especially for his Meursault Blagny. The more important cuvées will be racked before the 2017 harvest and returned to barrels; Bouzereau will then fine them in tanks for a month before bottling them in January. He predicts that the ‘16s will be accessible in three or four years.

As for the 2015s, Bouzereau believes that the quality of the grapes and their high levels of dry extract will enable them to age well. “Some wines are almost tannic,” he noted, adding that he finds the colors surprisingly bright and pale for such a sunny vintage. These wines have alcohol levels between 13.2% and 13.5% without chaptalization. Bouzereau noted that his wild yeasts work very well and that the finished alcohol levels can actually be 0.3% higher than before the fermentations.

Jean-Baptiste Bouzereau, who took over winemaking here in 2000 after working with his father Michel for ten years, told me that this estate has crushed all its Chardonnay fruit since 1998. He began harvesting in 2015 on August 28 and finished on September 7, bringing in his grapes with potential alcohol between 12.5% and 13.1% and chaptalizing just 0.2 degree. Bouzereau describes the young 2015s as elegant wines, maintaining that the vines never really suffered and that there’s no sign of extreme heat in the wines. Yields, he added, were “normal”—i.e., in the 50 to 55 hectoliters-per-hectare range.

Bouzereau uses 20% new oak for his village Meursault and 25% for the rest of his wines, including some demi-muids for the Meursault Les Grands Charrons. The 2015 malolactic fermentations finished between mid-March and early May of this year and Bouzereau’s normal practice is to bottle the second December and January.

Incidentally, Bouzereau told me that his 2006s are better now than they were several years ago. Similarly, he said, the 2015s from calcaire soil will need some extra time in bottle.

Roulot picked early in 2015, beginning on August 27 and finishing on September 4. "I had the experience of 2009 in my head," he explained. Roulot had “a good crop of savory, thick-skinned grapes that were hard to press” and potential alcohol levels ranged between 13% and 13.6% (he did not chaptalize). “It would have been a disaster to wait until September 8,” he said. Acidity levels following the malolactic fermentations are in the range of 3.8 to 4.0 grams per liter, with pHs between 3.1 and 3.25. “The 2015s are a mix of 2012 and the sunnier 2009 vintage,” he summarized, adding later in our tasting that some of the wines resemble the 2005s “in their heaviness.” He told me that he might wait until the end of August or early September to rack in order to get more tension in the wines. But I was pleasantly surprised by the energy in a number of Roulot’s ‘15s and he maintained that 2015 is “not atypical here.”