2014 Fixin La Place

Two thousand fourteen was Guillaume Tardy’s first vintage working with a pneumatic press (he previously used a screw press) and because he was afraid of making wines that would be too light, he did a bit more extraction during winemaking than he has ordinarily done in recent years. But the higher pHs of the year made for rounder wines that should offer relatively early appeal. For his part, Tardy describes them as “juicy and fruity, without hard tannins, and great for restaurants.” He bottled the '14s at the end of January of 2016.

Two thousand fourteen was Guillaume Tardy’s first vintage working with a pneumatic press (he previously used a screw press) and because he was afraid of making wines that would be too light, he did a bit more extraction during winemaking than he has ordinarily done in recent years But the higher pHs of the year made for rounder wines that should offer relatively early appeal For his part, Tardy describes them as “juicy and fruity, without hard tannins, and great for restaurants” He bottled the '14s at the end of January of 2016

This estate lost a lot of its production when vineyards it had previously sharecropped went back to Méo-Camuzet in 1997 but Jean Tardy began buying up small parcels two years later. I had not visited this state for nearly 25 years until this November, when I tasted with Guillaume Tardy, Jean’s 38-year-old son who took over responsibility for winemaking in 2001. Today he makes only about 20,000 bottles a year, working 4. 5 hectares of vines, including some rented vines on the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits and a sharecropping arrangement for a bit of Echézeaux.

Tardy routinely destems all of his fruit but does not crush the berries. He cools the must down to about 10 degrees C in the vats for seven or eight days, and he credits the slow start to the fermentations for giving his wines more glycerol. (Only wild yeasts are used here. ) He pumps over rather than punches down and tries not to extract tannins during the early days of the fermentation. He then maintains the vats at about 32 degrees C for five or six days at the end of the fermentation, doing some pigeages to get enough tannin extraction. He explained that he prefers to get his tannins from the skins than from the seeds, which is why he works mostly by infusion. He then ages his wines in barrels, on their lees, for 16 months, making greater use of CO2 than SO2 to preserve freshness. The village wines get 30% to 40% new oak, the premier crus around 50% and the grand crus 80%. I tasted the 2014s from one-year-old barrels.

Tardy describes 2014 as “a charming vintage with higher-than-usual pHs and attractive roundness. The wines have good concentration and ripe tannins but they will probably be mid-term agers rather than long-termers due to their pHs. ” Tardy noted that he saw some Drosophila suzukii in virtually every one of his vineyards, nothing that the big challenge was to avoid volatile acidity both before and after the vinifications. He told me that his wines finished with around 0. 3 VA, which is a very low level by red Burgundy standards.