2017 Chassagne-Montrachet Les Ruchottes 1er Cru

I had not been to this fabled domain in a number of years when I stopped by on a muggy night in early June. Since my last visit, Noël Ramonet, who was then in charge of winemaking, has gone into semi-retirement, and his brother Jean-Claude, who previously was responsible for the vineyards, has taken over the family operation, which is now simply called Jean-Claude Ramonet, as Jean-Claude supplements his vines by buying fruit from his brother's share of the vineyards.

The Ramonet wines have for years impressed with their combination of depth and precision, and their longevity, but Jean-Claude nonetheless described his young 2017s as “easy to drink” (I found them a bit more serious than that.) “There was a blockage of maturity until the rains came at the end of August,” he told me one evening at the beginning of June, with a black sky threatening downpours and hail. “The rain brought more ripeness and lowered the grapes’ previously high acidity,” said Ramonet, who started harvesting on September 4. In this cold, humid cellar, the malolactic fermentations typically take place late, so Ramonet showed me an edited group of ‘17s that had finished. Ramonet is normally a late bottler, at least for his top cuvées, and he did not plan to rack his ‘17s until December. (By the way, I tasted a full range of the Ramonet ‘16s, which will be included in my upcoming article on that vintage.)