2018 Volnay 1er Cru

Coche-Dury was one of a handful of domaines that seemed to make an effort in terms of Covid safety, though the fact that Raphaël Coche’s head bobbed above the protective screen probably left the virus bemused. There has been a good deal of construction work at the domaine in recent years, and instead of the barrel cellar, we tasted in a new, but unfinished high-ceiling tasting room adjacent to the winery. As is customary, the present vintage is not shown in barrel, rather the latest vintage in bottle, though even here for some reason a couple of 2018 cuvées were omitted. “At the beginning of August there was a storm, but Meursault did not suffer too badly,” he explained. “The warmth of the growing seasons can be a shock to the vines. The heat was brutal yet there was no doubt of hydric stress. It was not as dry as in 2019. We began the picking on 9 September, an early harvest, though I have no regrets about that. It was a generous harvest but not excessive, the combination of old vines and millerandage reducing the crop. It was a serene and quite rapid fermentation. The barrels are rotated every two years and so in 2018 we used barrels from the 2016 vintage. That was a small harvest [because of frost] so we bought wine from the Mâconnais in order to use these new barrels and not have an excess of new oak in 2018. It was a good decision. I find great maturity in the reds with high polyphenols, but the tannins do not show and there is no astringency. I gave them a slightly longer cuvaison, just one or one and a half days more. What is difficult to understand is that the wines did not undergo a lot of extraction but in the end they have so much structure.” No producer is beyond criticism. However, even from the entry-level Bourgogne Blanc, you step back in wonder at these exquisite wines. Forget the market price. The wines deliver. They have an additional layer of complexity that can rivet you to the spot. Cynics opining Raphaël Coche’s wines are somehow inferior to his father’s are driven by sentiment instead of examining the quality in the glass and these 2018s will disabuse those harbouring these ideas. Raphaël has his old man’s magic touch in the vineyard and winery.