2012 Gevrey-Chambertin Les Cazetiers 1er Cru

“For me, I consider the 2020 vintage as something very special for Burgundy," Frédéric Barnier explained during our traditional two sessions to taste through Jadot’s white and reds. "It is a vintage of hope for the future because it is one of the earliest ever made, picked mostly in August, which is clearly something unusual for the region. When we started to pick from August 19, nobody expected to pick grapes with such balance. Everyone was scared about this, believing that they would pick another 2003. So that was the surprise of the vintage. We started picking the reds during the first week because the Pinot Noir was suffering a little more than the Chardonnay. Why did the wines retain balance? It was because we had a reserve of acidity in the juice due to the previous season, especially tartaric acid. The pH was very good. The vines’ ripening was slowed down by the lack of rain from the end of July until picking. The last 10-day wave of heat in August meant that we had to start picking early in order to prevent overripeness. The air was so dry that it was an easy year in terms of there being no rot to deal with. So maybe we could have more vintages like 2020 in the future. There is no greenness in the reds, and this shows that the vines can work under such conditions, though there is a limit when you can pick. The yields for the whites are better in 2020 than in 2017, around 45hl/ha (compared 10–12hl/ha for 2021) and alcohol for the white is 13.5°. We had a good level of malic acid, but it was not that high and so malolactic fermentation did not make a big difference. The 2020 is not a vintage of concentration like 2019 – it’s a more classic, perhaps more shy vintage. I don’t think the whites and reds will be so easy to drink young."

Keeping with tradition, I spent two morning sessions tasting through Louis Jadot’s whites and reds with head winemaker Frédéric Barnier. Even though there are more than 100 wines here, that figure does not represent every cuvée that Jadot produced in 2019. Why do this exercise? Well, apart from quality, you can gauge how the Côte d’Or performed as a whole and from one commune to another. You have to be mindful that some of the blending is not finished, so as Barnier pointed out, he could subsequently decide to de-select barrels of a Premier Cru into a Village Cru. Nevertheless, they are pretty good approximations. Jadot have traditionally de-stemmed all their cuvées, though Barnier mentioned that he has experimented with stems with respect to Beaune Les Cras and Santenay Maladières with different percentages in order to understand their influence depending on the vintage.

“We had a dry winter, mostly cool and January was wonderful in terms of weather,” Barnier explained as we broached the 2019s. “We did not have big reserves of water in our soils. Even bud burst was not so early with the first leaves in the beginning of April. There was a cold snap, and this led to frost, the first on 5 April. The leaves were not out, but it was humid and so the frost affected the volume more than we thought at the time. The second episode was on 14 April. It was so bright during the night because everyone was burning [straw bales]. It was cold, -2 to -3°C, but it was dry and so it was not damaging. May was better, with good temperatures so there were a few intense weeks of vegetative growth. The first weeks of June were inclement with cold and humid weather that impacted the flowering causing coulure, for example in Clos Saint-Jacques where there was a huge amount of millerandé bunches. I have never seen it so widespread for whites and reds. From mid-June to mid-September we moved to hot and dry weather, especially a canicule at end of June and end of July. But we had a few showers in August that saved the crop from becoming overripe. Water management was one of the most important factors. Véraison was early-mid July and lasted 40 days because of the lack of water and maybe this helped the quality of fruit as we had a long cycle of maturation. But during the last days just before picking, we saw an acceleration of potential alcohol in small berries with little juice, so we started picking on 11 September.

The level of alcohol is around 14.0° for the whites, which is not something we have every year, but the long process saved the freshness and acidity. The pH is classic: two to three grams of malic acid. We are used to saying one-week equals one degree of potential alcohol but in the Côte d’Or that was just three days. You had to adapt and react very quickly. The reds were easier as the cycle of the Pinot Noir was a little later than the Chardonnay and that gave us a week more. The fruit was very healthy and needed little sorting. It was a classic vinification. You just had to make sure you finished the alcoholic fermentation. You have to control it, making sure the grapes are cool when they enter the vat. Part of the malo was before Christmas, especially for the whites, with the rest over spring. We blocked part of the malo, which is important with that degree of alcohol. The whites will be bottled from next February or March. Volumes are around half of a normal crop at around 30-35hl/ha.”

One has to consider the logistical challenges facing Louis Jadot and those of similar size. How do you marshal pickers into the right vineyard at the optimal moment when you have such a scattering of vineyards and when sugar levels both expedite the picking and shorten the window in order to avoid over-ripeness? In such a comprehensive tasting as this, you can begin picking out those that were harvested at just the right time and others that maybe were not. There are too many wines to go through individually, but I will choose a few. With respect to the whites, do check out the brilliant Chevalier-Montrachet Demoiselles that surpasses the Montrachet by some margin. The strongest performing appellation was Puligny-Montrachet more than Chassagne-Montrachet and Meursault, whilst I found much to admire with Jadot’s Savigny-lès-Beaune Clos des Guettes Blanc. Among the red appellations, I am drawn mostly towards a cluster of excellent wines from Gevrey-Chambertin, especially a brilliant Les Cazetiers that dares surpass Clos Saint-Jacques. It will be interesting to compare them once in bottle. Some other appellations were inconsistent, for example, Nuits Saints-Georges that never really shone like I expected. Far better is Jadot’s range in Chambolle-Musigny, where even the single vineyard Village Cru from Drazey shows great promise. At the top end, Jadot oversaw outstanding wines from Grands-Echézeaux and Musigny.

As I have done for several years, I arranged two sessions at Louis Jadot’s headquarters in Beaune to tackle their whites and reds respectively with head winemaker Frédéric Barnier. He has done a superb job since taking over from Jacques Lardière. “For sure it was a special year," he told me as I set up my laptop in their tasting room, a regiment of samples bottles lined up and ready for inspection. "The reason is clearly, we have incredible weather for growing the vines. All the fruit in 2018 was special as we had a warm six months from April until end of October. What made the difference is that we had water at good moments, in June after flowering, a big storm in July in the Côte d’Or and some in August. The vines adapted to the conditions. Dijon had more sunlight hours than even Nice! Growing seasons like this don’t happen often. We had a lot of fruit, full yields everywhere and sometimes more, so it was a generous vintage, for example the Meursault Village picked at around 55hl/ha. We did no green harvesting for the reds and with respect to the whites, those vineyards that we did green harvest did not achieve full yield. Most of the wines are between 13.5 and 14.0 degrees and we hardly needed any chaptalization The two last weeks were a little extreme with hot weather and a warm southerly wind that could have been too much for the vintage, but this was tempered by the yield. The juice saved the vintage. All the vines affected by mildew seemed to pick fruit a little overripe because those vineyards were not able to absorb those last two weeks. We sometimes had to wait to obtain better maturation of the skins and this gave us a shorter window to pick the grapes. There was very little to sort once we began the harvest on 29 August, the reds the following week around 2 September, a fortnight's picking due to the large crop. If you left the reds past the 15 September there could be too much alcohol and richness. It was a vintage where you had to use the cooling system as it was so warm. Most of the whites are not completely through their malolactic, though the level of malic acid was quite low, around 1gm/L." We then moved on to the reds. Barnier told me: "I think the Côte de Beaune shows very well in 2018. The Côte de Nuits is very impressive. It was mostly picked in the second week and you can feel the richness. The Côte de Beaune wines are well balanced and fresh. The ageing was key: Being sure to protect the wines from bacterial infection and VA. Some of the ferments were tricky to finish, but I am confident about their ageing potential."

As usual, I sectioned off two morning sessions to tackle the white and then the red Louis Jadot 2017s, over 100 wines in total. Chief winemaker Frédéric Barnier accompanied me through the tasting, though Thibault Gagey, son of president Pierre-Henry Gagey, joined us at around “Meursault o’clock.” Readers should note that Barnier kindly recorded a video in which he offers plenty of insight into the vintage; this can be found in the Multimedia section. I will relate just the basic information that he gave me with regard to the vintage. “We started picking around September 2 or 3 with the whites. The weather was quite good but the ambiance was so dry and the vines so thirsty that they absorbed the couple of showers that came the following week. The weather during the harvest was good but not perfect, but it was not too hot. I think the quality is higher for the whites than the reds because of the yields. The harvest finished with the top Côte de Nuits. You had to wait for the phenolic ripeness of the skins, even if the alcohol is, say, 13 degrees. You had to be patient during the ageing. The reds were open and easy to taste at first, but the density is coming with the ageing. The malolactic fermentation was quite early in 2017 and 99% of the reds went through malo before Christmas since the cellars were warm.”

As is the way when broaching such a comprehensive, multi-appellation tasting, the range encompasses both highs and, thankfully, a very few “lows.” I use quotation marks because they are not poor wines. Barnier has introduced more consistency across Jadot’s huge range, though within each appellation I find one or two that stand out: Saint-Aubin La Charmois, Meursault Charmes, Chassagne-Montrachet Morgeot Clos de la Chapelle and Puligny-Montrachet Clos de la Garenne, to name but a few. The Grand Crus are plentiful, with their own standouts, and I will leave readers to peruse them at leisure. I have signified the exact labeling since not only is there Maison and Domaine Louis Jadot, which has implications for how it is farmed, but three or four other labels that now include the Santenay estate Domaine Prieur-Brunet, which Jadot acquired in July 2017. These are indicated in the tasting notes.

“Two thousand sixteen is impossible to summarize,” said technical director Frédéric Barnier in January, “but it’s a dense vintage with concentration, strength and length. And it was a vintage to pick late.” Jadot waited until September 26 to start harvesting on the Côte de Beaune as the firm did not consider the fruit ripe until then, but Barnier pointed out that they received some grapes as early as the 13th from some of their suppliers. The Côte de Nuits harvest took place during the first week of October, and, said Barnier,“ our patience was rewarded.” (He emphasized that in relative terms, it was the actually the Côte de Beaune that was picked later.)

The end of the season brought a bump up in ripeness, as some vineyards needed—and received—more water, said Barnier, “but the harvest involved complex choices. The problem was the non-frosted vineyards that were carrying a good crop, which included most of our Côte de Nuits wines. We focused our attention on these vineyards, picking them when they needed to be picked. It mattered much less if our tiny, frosted cuvées reached 14% potential alcohol. A key to the success of 2016 was that the leaves stayed green despite the dry summer, and were then refreshed by rain in mid-September."

The '16 reds chez Jadot were chaptalized by about 0.5 degree, but Barnier noted that grape sugars were good, in the 12.5% to 13.2% range. “And some normally low-alcohol places gave very good sugars.” Barnier normally uses about 30% new oak for all of his wines “in order to eliminate a variable and more clearly highlight the terroirs,” adding that because Jadot does a long élevage the wines have time to absorb their oak. The pHs of the ‘16s are typically around 3.6, vs. 3.5 for the ‘15s.

“The ‘16s have been tender since the beginning, with fully ripe tannins and round acidity,” said Barnier. “Even some Pinots from tiny yields and frosted vines have round, tender tannins; I think some of our Chardonnays show the effects of the frost more." He went on: "In comparison, 2005 is a beast, with very concentrated tannins and powerful structure but a bit of rusticity because the maturation was not perfect. One hundred percent of the quality of 2016 was made by ripeness, but part of the quality of 2015 was due to concentration [through dehydration], rather than full ripeness.” Like a few of his colleagues, he compared 2015 and 2016 to 2009 and 2010. “But 2015 is denser than 2009, and 2016 is at the same level of quality as 2010 but in a different style.”

Jadot harvested Pinot Noir beginning on September 2 on the Côte de Beaune and on September 9 on the Côte de Nuits. The parcels that produced higher yields tended to come in with 12.5% to 12.7% potential alcohol, noted technical director Frédéric Barnier, but very few wines were chaptalized (“and only like adding salt and pepper”). Some of Jadot's vineyards were picked as high as 13.5%. The fermentations were “not too quick” owing to the density of the vintage, noted Barnier, who typically did two punchdowns per day during the eight or nine active days of the fermentation (total maceration time was generally about three and a half weeks). The malos were “classic,” finishing between February and June, and the wines were easy to rack clear—in contrast to the ‘14s, which were leesier due to the element of botrytis.

Barnier uses more or less one-third new oak across the board, in an attempt to minimize this variable and emphasize terroir differences among his vast number of wines. Jadot uses all Cadus barrels (they own this cooper) but have recently added some new origins for the oak itself. And Barnier prefers to use barrels aged for 24 to 30 months, vs. a standard 36 months at Cadus, as he believes that the tannins of younger oak are more resistant to oxidation. “With somewhat shorter aging of our barrels, we get less vanilla, less whiskey lactone and coconut character,” he explained, adding that “the risk, of course, is to get a certain greenness.” Barnier told me that he’s particularly proud of his Beaune wines in 2015, “even in the context of the high quality of the vintage.”

As late as mid-August, said technical director Frédéric Barnier, Jadot expected to start the harvest with Pinot Noir. But the ripening of the fruit then speeded up dramatically and the Chardonnay faced greater rot pressure. So the team began with some white grapes on September 11, then attacked Pinot Noir on September 15, picking with grape sugars in the 12% to 12. 5% range. By then, Barnier added, the Pinot plants were close to the end of their ripening cycle and they really didn’t gain in sugar in the last days before the harvest. “But the Chardonnay sugars were mounting quickly. ”

While Barnier destemmed all of his grapes and couldn’t do a cold soak with the fruit from vineyards afflicted by acid rot, he was generally able to carry out his normal extraction during fermentation. If the wines spent a bit less time on their skins than the previous year, that was due to warmer ambient temperatures. Barnier told me that 95% of the reds finished their malolactic fermentations before Christmas, which is unusual in their very cold cellar. “But the wines are back to what they should be after being awkward in the spring,” he said.

The differences in fruit ripeness and balance between the Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits were clear at Jadot, just as they were at virtually every other cellar with wines that span the Côte d'Or. Yields were much lower here in the Côte de Beaune wines, but Barnier described production on the Côte de Nuits as good in 2014."And those wines have a totally different touch; they're easier to taste." He noted that numerous wines from Chambolle-Musigny and Vosne-Romanée have an extra measure of density due to some hail losses. And he also likes the hail-afflicted village of Beaune for the "rare concentration" of many of its wines.

As usual, my tasting session at Jadot encompassed a dizzying array of wines. Although he only took over formally for Jacques Lardière in 2013 , winemaker Frédéric Barnier appears totally calm and settled into his role. Transitions are never easy, but Jadot seems to have managed this step of the process seamlessly. It's virtually impossible to generalize about a vintage at Jadot when the wines cover so many appellations, so readers should take these comments as broad brushstrokes that find more focus within the individual reviews. Overall, 2012 is very much a black fruit vintage at Jadot. By comparison, both 2009 and 2011 were brighter, while the 2010s are mostly marked by their energy. As was the case throughout the region, yields were affected dramatically because of poor weather conditions. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the wines of the Côte de Beaune, many of which are unusually big and burly. The weather also claimed several well-known bottlings here, including the Beaune Avaux, Toussaints and Chouacheux, Pommard Epenots and Grands Epenots, and Latricières-Chambertin, none of which were produced. In 2012, my preference is for the wines of the northern Côte de Nuits in the Jadot range.

Winemaker Jacques Lardiere, who seemed as full of energy in November as ever despite the brutally busy season around the Hospices de Beaune auction weekend, officially retired at the end of December after more than a quarter century in charge of winemaking here, and it will not be quite the same visiting Jadot in the future. But this important producer will be in good hands under new technical director Frederic Barnier, who has worked alongside Lardiere in recent years. It crossed my mind that Lardiere has been responsible for crafting a greater number of outstanding Burgundies during his career, both red and white, than anyone else I am aware of, and there will be many more from the 2011 vintage (not to mention 2012). Jadot harvested pinot noir during the first ten days of September, said Barnier, bringing in fruit with 11.8% to 12.5% potential alcohol and generally chaptalizing about half a degree. The pHs are not low (they're generally in the 3.6 to 3.7 range), but, said Barnier, "it's an early vintage without an early-vintage character." Incidentally, Lardiere pointed out that Beaune was a favored appellation in the context of the Cote de Beaune in 2011, but that vintage 2010 was tougher for this village.

I tasted an amazing range of 2010 reds at Jadot with long-term winemaker Jacques Lardière and his successor Frédéric Barnier. In order to make this large section of the report easier to read, I have broken up the wines into the Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits. Lardière and Barnier told me they were quite worried about the prospects for the harvest upon their return from summer vacations in August, but the year was saved by a perfect September. Yields are down 25-50% because of the frost and cold weather earlier in the year, but overall quality is very high. Lardière and Barnier also noted that early on it appeared that there would be a wide gap in quality between the Côte de Beaune and the Côte de Nuits, but over time that gap narrowed to some extent. Still, there is little question the vintage was more challenging in the Côte de Beaune because of a rainier summer and overall higher precipitation throughout the year.

I normally taste the new vintage of red wines in Jadot's massive, sepulchral barrel cellar, where this marathon routinely requires three or four hours. But it was even more intimidating to arrive this year to see 55 sample bottles laid out on a table. And that's far from the whole collection of Jadot reds in 2010, said Frederic Barnier, who will succeed long-time winemaker Jacques Lardiere when he retires at the end of this year (I'll believe it when I see it, as Lardiere is like the energizer bunny.) Barnier noted that grape sugars were typically around 12.5% in 2010, prior to a half-degree or so of chaptalization. All the wines were racked between May and August of '11, and will be racked a second time for the assemblage in March. The wines were kept in roughly 60% new oak until the first racking (a level higher than that of 2009), and are now in about 30% new barrels. Barnier noted that Jadot started harvesting on the Cote de Nuits on September 24, before beginning in Pommard, Volnay and Beaune, because the vegetative cycle was finished and the skins were beginning to wither. Fruit in the Cote de Beaune required patience as there was at least two more inches of rain here in August than on the Cote de Nuits. Yields were higher on the Cote de Beaune, Barnier added, "sometimes too much for the year, and the wines are generally not at the same level of quality."

Jacques Lardiere was one of a very few winemakers who discussed the importance of doing a saignee to concentrate the musts in 2009. "Especially in vineyards that produced high yields, it was important to do a triage at harvest-time and to do a saignee to get more concentration," he explained, adding that he bled off up to 20% of the juice in numerous cuvees. In fact, he said, he probably should have done more in some of his wines. Yields were typically between 42 and 45 hectoliters per hectare on the Cote de Nuits. In the end, he went on, there are great wines in 2009 but a range of quality: The best will be like the '59s "in the touch of their tannins." Lardiere told me that the average chaptalization in 2009 was 0.6%; the addition of sugar was mostly to compensate for evaporation during the long macerations. Jadot planned to start bottling at the beginning of 2011.

"I said from the beginning that the 2007 reds would be better than the whites," Jacques Lardiere reminded me as we began our marathon barrel tasting of the new vintage in Jadot's capacious dark cellar. "There's great minerality in the pinots, and it's rare to have minerality in wines that are supple and pleasant early on. The 2007 reds have soft, silky tannins but they also have power," he added. "The flavor really stays on the palate." At various times during our tasting, Lardiere described a number of 2007s as better than the 2005s and compared the 2007 vintage to his 1993s. The Jadot team did a particularly strong selection in its Cote de Beaune pinot parcels, eliminating up to 25% to 30% of the fruit. (Kobrand Inc., New York, NY) Also recommended: Pernand-Vergelesses Clos de la Croix de Pierre (85-87).

Almost predictably, Jacques Lardiere took a somewhat different approach from the majority of his fellow winemakers in Burgundy in 2004. For starters, he used more new oak than usual in 2004:normally 50% and up for the crus. Lardiere noted that the low temperature of Jadot's cellar gave many of the wines a rather hard tannic impression in November; and of course some of the malos were very late here. "The wines will be silkier than what we see now," is the way he put it. Lardiere carried out what he described as his "normal maceration," which means 16 to 24 days of total time on the skins-or a good 8 to 10 days less than a "big year" like '99.

Jadot bought almost no red grapes or wine in 2003, relying instead on owned vineyards that it could control totally and harvest late-mostly after September 1.Almost predictably, Jacques Lardiere took a different approach to vinifying his 2003s than most of his Burgundy colleagues."The key to the vintage was long maceration," he insisted. "The vintage was very Mediterranean in style at the beginning.That's why I did so much extraction.We didn't have much juice in the grapes, and we would not have been able to expand the spectrum of aromas and flavors without doing enough maceration.If the tannins in some of the wines look green today, it's because of our extraction.But it would have been a mistake to think that we could retain the same fruit that we had at the beginning."The macerations here lasted between 15 and 23 days, short for Jadot but long for Burgundy 2003; Lardiere did two pigeages per day except during the last week the wine remained in contact with the skins. Lardiere did not acidify the musts, but noted that he may still add a bit of tartaric to the wines.The top cuvees, like Jadot's 1997s, offer strong potential, but Lardiere was quick to emphasize that 1997 was a special case here."We picked way late in '97, 12 days after everyone else," he explained."We made great wine because our grapes lost 20% to 30% of their liquid.The early harvesters picked in the rain."

According to winemaker Jacques Lardiere, macerations in 2002 generally lasted 24 to 26 days, compared to 33 to 35 for the robust 1999s.(In comparison, the lower-acid 2003 fruit macerated for only 18 to 20 days). Lardiere described the vintage as a pleasant surprise, in light of the fact that the potential yields were high owing to an absence of problems during the spring.According to Lardiere, "2002 will be a good 20-year vintage, and some will go longer."

Winemaker Jacques Lardiere characterizes the 2000 vintage as "soft, pretty, accessible." He actually increased the percentage of new oak in 2000, though he described this approach as risky. "We use more new oak on a so-so vintage than a rich one. But it to connect the wine's phenols, to keep the wine alive, rather than to add something. We also needed to do longer macerations, typically 26 to 28 days but sometimes longer, and the result was that we got sweeter tannins." Lardiere uses mostly Nevers oak; he finds Allier too strong and believes that this type of oak works better in vintages in which the macerations are short. He told me he did little saignee because Jadot had already eliminated so much less-than-perfect fruit on its table de trie Lardiere, well placed to comment on vintage differences across appellations owing to the great range of wines he makes, feels that 2000 favored the villages of Nuits-Saint-Georges and Gevrey-Chambertin.

Jacques Lardiere did very long macerations in '97, '98 and '99-typically 28 to 36 days in '99, though due to the sheer size of the crop he had to speed up the maceration of a few of his smaller wines by punching down the cap more frequently. Although Jadot made the full allowable yields in many of its holdings (in some instances, production was three times the yield of '98, according to Lardiere), the best cru bottlings will have no problem aging for 30 years, Lardiere claims. "We had similar grape sugars to '98 and slightly lower acidity, but there are plenty of tannins to compensate for the lower acids," he explained. "It a group of wines that will be pretty after the bottling but age well." Lardiere routinely eliminated about 20% of the juice via saignee following the '99 harvest; he is confident that this technique for concentrating the must removes only water.

Following a cool maceration lasting up to a week at the start of the harvest but more like three or four days for late-arriving fruit, the '98s spent anywhere from 28 to 37 days on their skins, with fermentation temperatures reaching as high as 40oC. Crop levels were small, and the wines have good color, said winemaker Jacques Lardiere. But following late malos that mostly ended in September, added Lardiere, "the wines are just beginning to mature, because no polymerization of tannins takes place until after the malos." Or, as director Pierre-Henri Gagey put it in November, "the wines are now going through a densification." "It's just a matter of time," said Lardiere. "Some of the '98s will be quite good, even if the high points are not as high as those of the last three vintages."x000D x000D x000D x000D In 1997, Jadot harvested its domain holdings late, allowing the grapes to lose some of their excess water following the early September rains. These '97s offer almost magical freshness of fruit for wines so rich and ripe; few of the top bottlings from Jadot's own vineyards show the roasted quality that characterizes so many wines from this vintage. Jacques Lardiere stepped up to the plate in '97 and whacked the ball about 500 feet.

Winemaker Jacques Lardiere pointed out that the extremely even ripening that occurred in 1996 partly mitigates the higher yields of the vintage. "All of the flowering in '96 took place in five days," he pointed out. "The result was very homogeneous ripening, from north to south. This is one reason why there are no rough edges in these '96s." Still, because of the size of the crop, Lardiere carried out a saignee "for everything," but particularly in younger vines, and used even less new oak than usual. He appeared more excited over the quality of the '96s in November than he did about the '95s a year earlier. Lardiere employs a very long cuvaison(28 days was the minimum maceration time for the '96s) to break down the tannins, and I was struck by how harmonious the tannins are in '96. The vintage had higher acidity and higher pHs than those of '95, Lardiere notes, and softer tannins are usually linked with higher pH. Incidentally, the '97 crop was vinified at Jadot new state-of-the-art winery, and their new destemmer will allow a higher percentage of berries to go into the fermenter uncrushed.