2020 Echézeaux Grand Cru

“It is an amazing vintage,” Mathilde Grivot told me in their first-floor tasting room above the winery (alas, the view over the vines was shrouded in the first autumn fog). She has now really taken over the running of this domaine from her father Etienne, who was present, though he let his daughter do most of the talking. “I remember in 2019 my father told us that he had never seen that kind of vintage, but during the harvest of 2020, the balance was even better. There was not too much water during summer but we did not suffer stress. All the wines are between 13.0° and 13.8° with a pH of 3.45, so that acidity is close to the best vintages. We started the harvest on September 3 as the vineyard allowed us to wait without producing excessive alcohol. We don’t have to cool down the fermentation temperature so much these days, and we had around three days’ longer alcoholic fermentation.” Etienne Grivot opined: “The vintage has great freshness and mineralité, and each terroir is expressed. For the Nuits Saint-Georges Les Pruliers, we tasted the berries in the vineyard, but it was not ready. We had rain in Nuits Saint-Georges and the alcohol increased 1.5° more in two or three days, so the Les Pruliers ended up with 14.8°. Everything is de-stemmed as usual. The color was very easy to extract, so before starting the pigeage, we examined the cap. I have never seen three vintages like 2018, 2019 and 2020 in terms of balance and acidity. We have 40% less production than usual (50% less in 2021) but the figure depends on each cuvée. They will be racked before Christmas and probably bottled in March and April according to the moon and barometric pressure. We still use natural corks from Trescases that are individually checked and have greater density, which is important as we now work in a more reductive way.” I loved these wines. Picked later than others, which is not uncommon chez Grivot, they are imbued with a slight decadence, and endowed with intense fruit aromatics and flavors. Yet there is countervailing poise and tension. Only the aforementioned Les Pruliers indicated some over-maturity, while others seemed perfectly judged. “I compare 2019 with 2015,” Etienne Grivot summed up. “I think that 2020 is like a straight line, but there is movement and eventually it will become more horizontal.”