2021 Pouilly-Vinzelles

My final visit during my six-week trip to the Côte d’Or is on Friday morning chez Drouhin in the heart of Beaune. As Véronique Drouhin is in Paris, I taste with her brother, Frédéric.

“The wines are evolving slowly, so we are not doing an early bottling,” Drouhin explains. “For me, the style is seductive and unique. Seductive because the style of the wine is pleasant, charming and precise, terroir-driven. It’s unique because of Nature that year. The frost took us all by surprise, especially in the Côte d’Or. On 6 April, the temperature fell from 3° Celsius to -6° Celsius in three-four hours. We did our best to protect the buds. We put candles in Montrachet, but we could not protect all the vineyards. In some cases, like in Puligny-Folatières we lost the entire production; others like in Beaune Clos des Mouches the yields were very low. It was the same for the reds though they did not suffer as much from the frost. We had constant disease pressure with first and second-generation grapes, so we had to pick often two times in the same vineyard (from 17 September), which was another difficulty. Some sorting was necessary. The vinification was quite slow, and we did not look for too much extraction. With a lot of malic, we tried to guide the wines and work more on the balance and aromatics, working on the lees during aging. We had to conduct a different vinification as we had to downsize the fermenters into barrels instead of vats. The samples represent barrels racked and ready for bottling in a few months.”