2018 Rouge Bourgogne Hautes-Côtes de Nuits Cuvée Maelie

Winemaker Guillaume Tardy always offers a candid perspective on the previous growing season. “The good point of the 2018 growing season was a lot of rain end of May and beginning of June that helped to keep feeding the vines until the harvest, since we had little rain in August, just a couple of showers. One week before the harvest we thought the berries were drying. There was some filitré [shriveled skins] and we thought there would be little juice. But it was the opposite. We started picking on 5 September, the same as in 2015, but the grapes were riper, around half a degree more alcohol. We picked the grapes between 13.2% and 13.5% and kept good freshness and average acidity. After malo the pH is between 3.4 and 3.6, total acidity between 3.4 and 3.8gm/L. It’s enough acidity to keep the balance and make sure the wines can age. The 2018 is more a "keeping" year than some 2015 and 2017s. These wines have good body. As there was more juice than usual I extracted a little less than 2017s, but to fill the middle palate we had to work a little as well, with a longer extraction period at 32°C and one pigeage less than last year. The tannins are more present on the 2018s so we have to be more patient. In a way I don’t recognise the 2018s as my style of wine whereas the 2017s are. At the beginning of the élevage we thought the 2018 would be like 2015 but the tannins are much stronger."