2016 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru

Winemaker Nadine Gublin told me that she’s agreeably surprised by the aromatic maturity and balance of the estate’s 2017 white wines, noting that they have force and length but that “you don’t feel the alcohol.” She added that it was a hot, early year [the estate brought in its Chardonnay beginning on August 29] and that grape sugars were between 13% and 14%. But, as is often the case in Domaine Prieur’s cold cellar, the ‘17s were evolving at a snail’s pace and were not yet available for tasting at the beginning of June: four wines were in the middle of their malolactic fermentations and the others hadn’t started yet.

So I tasted the ‘16s, only a few of which I had been able to sample from barrel in the late spring of 2017. This later harvest (September 23 through 29 for the Chardonnay here) yielded wines with moderate alcohol levels, and Gublin was still in the process of bottling them at the beginning of June. “I’m just now finding the structure and a point of salinity in the wines,” said Gublin, who insisted that “even the frosted wines show finesse.” She considers 2016 to be a white wine vintage for medium-term drinking, noting that the 2017s are richer and more structured. “But the first 2016s to be bottled are still fruity and pleasurable, and not closing up, which is a positive point for the moment,” she added. I should note that Gublin considers 2016 "a truly great vintage for the estate's reds."