2016 Meursault Rougeots

Raphaël Coche was not ready to present his young 2017 white wines on my late-spring tour but he had some interesting comments about this vintage. He asserted that 2017s show "very particular aromas all over France," mentioning "fresh green notes" as well as "almost Jura-like vegetal and oxidation notes." The wines are in a very singular style, he concluded, and we need to wait longer to pass judgment on these wines.

As to vintage 2016, Coche told me that a number of his family's parcels lost more than 50% of their normal crop, "and the Meursault Chevalières was killed." But because there were no second-generation grapes, we had fairly consistent ripeness," although he later admitted that some '16s "were not really physiologically ripe at the harvest." He added that back in 1981, another year with a terrible frost, his father Jean-François vinified with the second-generation grapes and there was thus a wide range of ripeness in the material. Still, Coche père et fils made a few stunning--and surprisingly classic--wines in 2016, and they are likely to be among the stars of the vintage. All of the '16s were bottled in March and April of this year.