2017 Puligny-Montrachet Village

My tasting with Jacques Carillon never takes long since this diminutive Domaine only has half a dozen cuvées. And it will get shorter from 2018 since his father's lease on the Chassagne-Montrachet Les Chenevottes came to an end so that henceforth the totality of the family's holding will be made by his brother at Domaine François Carillon. At least the quality of wines at this address is superlative. He told me that he began the picking on 28 August and that he adopts the "Roulot" method of 12 months in barrel and then six months in stainless steel before bottling. As usual, I tasted through the last two vintages, so you will find notes for both 2017 and 2018 here .

Jacques Carillon, who started picking on September 1, believes his grapes lost some acidity during the warm nights just before the harvest. Partly for this reason, he views the vintage as “a bit too round and easy,” at least in comparison to 2016, but then Carillon has always preferred cooler, more classic years with high-pitched aromatics, brisk minerality and firm spine. While he had higher yields in his village parcels in 2017 than in 2016, he made a reasonable 48 to 50 hectoliters per hectare in most of his premier crus as hot weather during the flowering resulted in coulure and smaller grapes. He harvested with potential alcohol typically in the 12.5% to 13% range, chaptalizing his less-ripe wines by about half a percent but more like 0.3 for those he brought in at 13%. In contrast to a few recent vintages here, the malolactic fermentations went fairly quickly and were mostly finished two to three months prior to my early-June visit.