2019 Saint-Aubin Les Frionnes 1er Cru

I turned up at the doorstep of Domaine Jean-Claude Bachelet on the first afternoon of my five-week marathon, only for a perplexed Benoît Bachelet to greet me with nothing in his diary and no samples prepared. Turns out that I had confused my Bachelets and should have been in Gevrey-Chambertin with Denis Bachelet. Doh! Still, we rearranged a visit a couple of weeks later.

“We had a cold snap during spring that affected the flowering and the potential of the crop,” he explained, flanked by his brother Jean-Baptiste. “During the summer the weather was normal, but the quantity of sugar was high, and the phenolic maturity was not there. So, I chose to wait even if we had higher alcoholic content. We began [the harvest] on 7 September in Saint-Aubin with the young vines and then restarted on 12 September until 18 September with the reds. We are using biodynamics in the vineyards, so we had to use sulphur, and this caused some burning of grapes during the summer. It was not easy to control. It was the same in 2020. The vinification was regular, and we will keep the 2019s in barrel until end February/March before blending in tanks, to be bottled in July. We did not have to adjust the wines in any way as they had good natural balance. Yields are about 30hl/ha for the whites and 35hl/ha for the reds, where the malolactic finished about 6 weeks ago. We like delay it until after the following harvest.”

I have been a fan of this estate for a number of years. Re-examining my tasting notes for their 2019s, I find that some climats performed better than others. For example, their Saint-Aubin Les Murgers des Dents de Chien and Chassagne-Montrachet Blanchot-Dessus are both exemplary, particularly the former, one of my favourite wines for that appellation. Needless to say, that their solitary Grand Cru in Bienvenues-Bâtard-Montrachet from six rows of vine is outstanding and I know first-hand that it matures marvellously in bottle. Some cuvées appeared a little overwhelmed by the warmth of that summer and it shaved away some of their potential edge and race. Generally, these maintain their slightly bolder, richer style of white Burgundy that is always enhanced by a longer élevage than others, that second winter in barrel crucial to their style.