2016 Meursault Charmes 1er Cru

Jean-Pierre Latour describes 2016 as “a very heterogeneous vintage,” and he’s afraid that the vintage will be “penalized” for that reason. But he believes that his wines will be “classic agers except for the village wine,” adding that "the ‘16s are not severe but they’re serious.” There was an element of stress from the frost, he told me, not to mention an almost three-week difference between the first-generation grapes and the later buds. Latour clarified that some of his vineyards experienced temperatures of minus seven or eight degrees C. on the deadly night of the frost, which would have destroyed any chance of a second generation of fruit. “So we’re really talking about the difference between the first buds and the contre-bourgeons, not the second generation,” he explained.

Latour bottled his wines early, in mid-January, as he wanted to retain freshness by not waiting any longer. They had been racked into tanks last August.

Jean-Pierre Latour began harvesting in 2016 on September 22, with crop levels especially low in his lesser village sites. But some of his premier crus were also hard-hit by frost: Latour will not offer Poruzots or Bouchères from this vintage, and there’s much less Charmes than usual (but his prime holding of Meursault Genevrières was untouched, producing a larger crop than in 2015). Potential alcohols were in the fairly high 13% to 13.5% range and the malos finished by the end of March. Latour describes 2016 as “in a classic style” but noted that “nothing was as easy as in 2015.” The newer crop of wines has less stuffing than the ‘15s and Latour did more batonnage with the ‘16s, especially for the vineyards that produced larger crop levels. “The plenitude has taken longer to come,” he told me, and he’s unlikely to bottle the '16s early. Latour noted that he was surprised by the pHs (around 3.18) and acidity levels (in the neighborhood of 4.8 grams per liter) in the ‘16s at the end of their malos, adding that the wines are very well balanced.

Interestingly, Latour told me that, early on, he was more afraid that his 2015s would be fragile wines than he was a year later with the ‘16s. He did not believe that the ‘15s could support a long élevage, and he bottled them in February in an attempt to preserve fruit and balance. He also did less de-gassing of the wines at bottling than normal in order to keep higher levels of CO2, but finished them with the same amount of free sulfur (40 ppm) as usual, using "the densest possible" 25-millimeter corks. “The sun gave these wines their sweetness and fat,” he opined. He considers 2015 to be a more concentrated version of 2009, “but both vintages have an easiness.”