2016 Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru

Pillot, who lost upwards of two-thirds of his Chardonnay in 2016, described the wines last year as “chiseled like the 2010s were at the beginning,” adding that they’re “not about largeness and shoulders.” Now that the wines are finished, he considers them to be more acid than the ‘17s, as the younger crop of wines possesses more enveloping gras. He also believes that their citrus zest acidity will hold the '16s for a long time. Pillot barely made any Chassagne-Montrachet Chenevottes or Vergers in 2016, but his top cuvées were impressive at the end of May.

Jean-Marc Pillot told me that based on the frost in 2016 and the date of the flowering he should have picked on October 3, but in the end he started on September 22 owing to the sustained hot weather from mid-July through mid-September. There were 65 millimeters of rain on September 14, said Pillot, and although the grapes swelled, he maintained that the precipitation was a net positive. Grape sugars began at 12.3% and Pillot chaptalized his lighter cuvées to 13% or a bit higher. Overall, he lost about 70% of his Chardonnay in 2016, and made virtually no Chenevottes or Vergers.

Pillot told me that he finds the '16s less dense as well as less aromatic than the '15s due to the heat and grillure, yet he finds more minerality in the newer crop of wines. "The wines had a bit of a hole in the middle before the malolactic fermentations," he told me, "but they took on more flesh and richness with the malos," which finished between January and April. Pillot showed me his '16s from one-year-old barrels, which he felt would be most representative of the final blends.

As to his 2015s in bottle, Pillot described them as “rich, dense, thick wines with enormous volume.” He believes that they will be best to drink over the next five years. Yes, it was a very sunny year, he told me, but he also stressed that “2003 is my only truly atypical vintage.”