2018 Côteaux Bourguignons

It was a bloody assault course attempting to enter Grivot this year. Roadworks meant that I had to hop, skip and jump between diggers and trenches for Vosne’s new water pipeline. Fortunately, the wines were worth endangering my life. “In 2018 it was difficult to find the picking date after a very dry summer with hot temperatures," Mathilde Grivot told me inside possibly the finest tasting room in the Côte d’Or (warm, big table, wifi, panorama across the Vosne rooftops). "The sugar was very good and the acidity started to fall. When we tried the berries we felt a green sensation, the skins were not ready. Normally at Grivot we build the wine around the acidity, but this year it is around the maturity of the tannins. We had 20mm of rain five days before we started picking on 11 September, after which unusually, the temperature did not go down. My father continued tasting the berries in the vineyard and in the end we picked all the older vines in vineyards like Echézeaux and Richebourg first and the village crus later since they are planted on deeper soils. We needed eight days to complete the harvest. All the wines are between 13% and 14% alcohol, the highest in Nuits Saint-Georges Les Pruliers. We were happy to find a concentration of acid so that the pH is around 3.5 and total acidity 3.1 and 3.3gm/L. That is good for this kind of vintage. Everything was de-stemmed as usual. The grapes were very warm so we did a cold pre-fermentation for six days and then after, the vinification was normal, no problem fermenting the sugar and the malolactic started for the Bourgogne and the Village Crus in February. The Premier and Grand Crus are in colder cellars so their malos finished from March until the beginning of June. We have good complexity, freshness and elegance and the tannins are very smooth." At this point her father, Etienne Grivot joined us and offered his own thoughts. "“The challenge was to have the balance," he said. "In 2018 we were able to alter the texture of tannins by waiting for four or five days after the rain on 6 September. We also went through the vineyard to eradicate excess green or pink grapes that would not mature. What I like is that in this vintage you can still see the terroir of each vineyard."