2015 Meursault Village

Jean-Philippe Fichet didn’t buy any new barrels prior to the harvest of 2016 because he didn’t think he’d have a vintage; in the end, though, he purchased just five new barrels, and his total production was down only about 25%. (Fichet told me he did 16 treatments for oidium and mildew in '16.). He harvested his fruit between September 23 and 29 with 12% to 13% potential alcohol and chaptalized the lighter wines a half degree. He carried out three or four batonnages before the malos started (they finished very early, by the end of 2016), then stopped stirring. The wines were still in barrels when I visited the estate at the beginning of June. Fichet planned to rack the wines in August and bottle them early next spring.

In contract to 2016, the growing season of 2015 was a walk in the park for Fichet. "We could work as we wanted," he told me. "The wines combine lovely vivacity and richness."

Two thousand fifteen will not be a vin de garde like 2012 and 2005, said Jean-Philippe Fichet at the beginning of June. “It’s a bit like 2009 for the people who do good work in the vineyards and winery,” he went on. “The key was not to have tiny yields and not to pick too late.” Fichet is not a fan of low-yield Chardonnays. “Often the best years are the generous ones,” he told me, “like 1973, 1979, 1982, 1989, 1992, 1996 and 2002.” Fichet starts with a good bit of lees in his barrels as he does very little débourbage. He does hardly any stirring of the lees, “only for the cuvées that fall clear too quickly; it’s not necessary to stir the ones that are still cloudy.”

Fichet started harvesting on September 1 with grape sugars between 12.8% and 13% alcohol and, with minimal chaptalization, the wines will be bottled with alcohol of 13% to 13.2%. Acidity levels in the post-malo wines range from 3.9 to 4.5 grams per liter.