2018 Saint-Aubin En Montceau 1er Cru

This producer has enjoyed a purple patch over the last decade. Winemaker Damien Colin together with his sister Caroline have overseen some scintillating expressions from vines that populate Saint-Aubin, Chassagne and Puligny-Montrachet. It reaches its zenith with their holdings in Montrachet, the original split into quarters, their Domaine with two of those, the other quarters with older brother Pierre Yves Colin and Joseph Colin.

“There was no frost, and the flowering went very well at around the usual time of year,” Colin explains down in his tasting room. “There was no heat stress during the growing season as there were occasional storms. There was no problem with mildew in 2023 but more with oidium, which made it difficult farming organically. I started the harvest on September 1. You had to sort carefully, especially for the younger vines. The yield averaged around 55 hl/ha. We are still using natural yeasts during fermentation, and we did just a tiny amount of pigeage for the reds. The malo passed normally during the winter and we matured 11 months in barrel and then six months in stainless steel, 10% new oak for the reds. The whites are still in vat, aged in a maximum of 15% new oak for the Saint-Aubins and 20-25% for the Chassagnes, the barrels sourced from three cooperages, mostly François Frères. We will bottle the wines early next year. It was a generous year for the red wines, but the older vines limited yields. Vine age is crucial for this vintage.”

We always have a frank exchange on the quality of the wines. Like Pascal Mugneret and Christophe Perrot-Minot, they want honest feedback. This year, I felt that the best quality, certainly when considering price, lies within the strong array of Saint-Aubin, not least their stunning La Chatenière. Perhaps the Chassagne and Puligny cuvées are just a whisker away from the 2022s that exuded nascent ambition, though unequivocally, their Montrachet is an apex of the entire vintage, quite profound. No, I did not use my spittoon.

Winemaker Damien Colin had recently received South African winemaker/deity Eben Sadie at his winery. This shows that Sadie has good taste in Burgundy, which you can observe by the dozens of bottles decorating his tasting room in Swartland. I hope Colin enjoys the Columella that he left as a gift. This was back to the full complement after frost depleted and extinguished some cuvées last year. “It is a vintage that saw just a little frost in Saint-Aubin in Montceau, where we lost just 15% or so,” he tells me. “It was a vintage when it was easy to work in the vines without much mildew but always with a risk of oïdium, so you had to be quite vigilant. Saint-Aubin is prone to oïdium. We started picking on August 25, the earliest ever. We picked quite quickly over six days because ripeness was already there across all our vineyards, commencing with the Les Vides Bourses, which is always the most precocious. Compare this with 2021, that took two weeks to pick. There is a lot of discussion about when to harvest. For us, we pick a little earlier to maintain the freshness and maintain alcohol around 12.5% and 13.0%. The yield was around 45hL/ha across all the appellation, so we went back to 12 months in barrel (a maximum 25% new oak for the Premier Crus from four cooperages) and then six months in vat. None of the wines are bottled yet. The reds will be bottled in November or December, the whites in January or February. We use the second winter to clarify the wines. I like this vintage because you can see the differences between the terroirs, I think more so than in 2020 as the maturity was a little richer.”

This is a seriously impressive portfolio from Colin, a winemaker with that magic touch. Highlights include a thrilling Chassagne Les Vides-Bourses and En Cailleret, plus wonderful wines from Saint-Aubin En Montceau, La Chatenière and Les Combes—also his Puligny Les Enseignières, just in case Coche-Dury’s is outside your budget.

Damien Marc Colin is my first port of call during my Burgundy “marathon” on a beautiful sunny autumn morning down in the village of Gamay. “It was a vintage where we had a lot of frost damage – we lost 55%. With the small cuvées, we were obliged to blend these to create a Premier Cru in Saint-Aubin and Chassagne-Montrachet. There were sometimes just one or two barrels in the most affected vineyards. For Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru, we blended Champ-Gain and Caillerets, and there are five or six in the one for Saint-Aubin. It is a vintage where the maturity was 12.5% natural with a higher acidity than in recent years. I think the vintage has lots of fruit and will be easy to drink; overall, it may be better than I expected. The acidity is around 3.15 to 3.20, but the pH has changed significantly. In the case we have a canicule [drought], we have low malic but high tartaric, the acidity staying high after the malo, however with 2021, there was a lot of malic (4g/L), so this total acidity fell after malo, and the wines are more flattering. For 2022, for example, we have 2g/L with more tartaric. In 2021, the temperatures were lower in the summer with more rain, though it was not difficult to reach maturity as we had a much smaller volume. We started the picking around 18 September compared to 25 August in 2022. There were no problems with the vinification, the alcoholic and malolactic fermentation both in barrel, the former taking longer because we use no SO2. This means there is a higher population of different yeasts than a dominant one, which prolongs the fermentation. We add SO2 after the malo and just prior to bottling. We will mature the 2021s for 12 months in barrel (four cooperages nowadays, whereas there were a dozen used a few years ago) and then six months in tank before bottling. The wines are much clearer today, so we do not do any filtration or fining, which can detract from some detail. I wanted to make a vintage like 2006 and 2014, but it’s a very different vintage, as the 2021 gives much more pleasure. There are Grand Crus this year: 180 liters for Bâtard-Montrachet and 200 liters of Montrachet - though they were more difficult to vinify due to the tiny quantities. For the reds, the volumes were normal as the later-ripening Pinot Noir was less touched by the frost.”

“The 2020 vintage was easy overall – no hail or maladies, but a precocious harvest, so we started picking August 22,” Damien Colin explained when I dropped in at his winery in the confusingly named village of Gamay. “You would think that the wines are rich, but they’re not at all like that. The whites are coming back to a more classic style of Burgundy, less ripe and rich than the previous two vintages, with a lot of freshness. With the maturity and acidity levels, I felt that we should reduce the percentage of new oak to preserve this freshness and also pick each parcel at optimal maturity within the climat. For example, the Chassagne-Montrachet Village was picked over five different days, and the same for the En Remilly, whereas before they were picked and blended in the vat on the same day. Each parcel is vinified separately and then blended to try to respect the maturity of each one. There is no bâtonnage, and now I use three cooperages instead of ten: Chassin, François Frères and one in Cognac. I no longer use foudres because the domaine is smaller and we have smaller yields, so the wine is just matured in piéces. All the wines have been in vat since September. I prefer the 2020 to the 2019 because it is more Bourguignon, more classic in style.” This was a fabulous set of 2020s from Damien Colin, full of verve and precision.

Updown Farmhouse is in the opening pages of what will hopefully be a long and prosperous life.

Since splitting with his brother Joseph, whose wines will hopefully be added to this report in the not-too-distant future, winemaker Damien Colin, together with his sister Caroline, has continued to create some of the best Burgundy wines you will find in Saint-Aubin, Chassagne and Puligny-Montrachet, from his winery based in the confusingly-titled village of Gamay. “It is a complicated growing season with the frost and the ‘canicule’ [heat wave]. In some appellations we produced just 30% of a normal crop in 2019, though there are others that produced a normal yield.” Damien Colin added that in Saint-Aubin, parcels located on the slopes that normally escape frost, were affected in 2019. Vines on flatter areas that are prone to frost damage seemed to escape Scot-free. He continued saying that in Saint-Aubin, buds had already begun opening, allowing moisture to enter, causing some of them to ‘explode’ when it turned to ice.

“Flowering was normal and then there was a heatwave in the summer, but the vines did not suffer much hydric stress despite the high temperatures that reached around 40°C. The harvest was small, so the maturity came very quickly. The vintage was expected to be 15 September but by the end of August the natural alcohol was around 12.0° to 12.5°. Therefore, we brought the picking forward and began on 7 September until 18-19 September. For the whites the alcohol degree is 13.5° to 14.0°C but with high acidity, mainly tartaric. The malic was low so after the malolactic fermentation the acidity levels are still good. The harvest was rapid because of the small yields, though we had to keep stopping and starting to be precise in terms of picking. The fermentation was quite quick, finishing around mid-November and the malos passed normally in springtime. From 2019 we no longer use SO2 until after the malolactic, which was fine in 2019 as the fruit was healthy. The SO2 inhibits some of the natural yeasts and without SO2 we have a broad spectrum of yeasts that engender more complex wine. The Village Crus are matured in around 15% new oak and the Premier Crus between 20% and 25% new oak. The 2019s are all taken from vat and will be bottled next spring with the final six months in tank.”

The 2019s from Domaine Marc Colin do not disappoint and it is remarkable, almost irrational that such freshness could be conjured in such a dry and warm season. Standout? Perhaps surprising to some, it is not their morsel of Montrachet, good as that is, but a thrilling Bâtard-Montrachet, a Grand Cru that I feel over-performs in this vintage. If unable to splash the cash, then head for their outstanding Saint-Aubin Les Charmois or Les Combes or just buy both. I also found much to admire apropos their nervy Chassagne-Montrachets, particularly in Les Vides Bourses. Not every cuvée hit the bulls-eye, but generally these 2019s continue to consolidate Damien Colin’s reputation as winemaker par excellence. Pressing him to choose between 2018 and 2019 he replies: “It is difficult for me to say one vintage is better than the other. I find more terroir character in 2019 and I think that they will need more time.”

Long-term readers will be aware of the esteem in which I hold this domaine, based in Gamay. In recent years, they have built up a loyal following of wine-lovers who adore their mainly white crus that focus on Saint-Aubin, yet extend into Chassagne- and Puligny-Montrachet, including a prized plot in Montrachet. For me, their range really shines at Premier and even Village Cru level. Damien Colin is a congenial winemaker who has pushed quality to greater heights in recent years. He started off by explaining the recent amicable division between himself and his brother. “My brother Joseph has created his own domaine with six hectares and so Caroline and I will keep 12 hectares,” he said. “Some vineyards go to him entirely and others are split between us. Joseph has his own family and so naturally he wanted his own enterprise.” Some of the minutiae of the division and reconfiguration of holdings can be found in the tasting notes, but basically the crus that will no longer appear under “Marc Colin” but “Joseph Colin” henceforth include Puligny La Garenne, Saint-Aubin Clos de Meix, Sous la Roche Dumay and Sur Le Sentier du Clou. I will try to taste Joseph’s wines in future, but I was unable to do so this year due to time constraints.

“We had no problem with the frost in 2017,” Damien continued. “There was some pressure of mildew but none during the harvest. It was more difficult in July when it was hot. The harvest began on September 2 and it went well, taking place over nine days. The vinification was normal. One thing that has changed is that from 2017, all the wines spend six months minimum in tank after 12 months in bottle, and now we have more space in the winery that makes this possible. It gives more freshness and density to the wines, but keeps the same style. Also, I use slightly larger barrels, 300 and 350 litres in size for the whites, to moderate the influence of oak.”

This was yet another strong set of performances from the domaine and perhaps with fewer cuvées to tend, Damien Colin can focus even more attention on quality. Amongst several Saint-Aubins, the Le Charmois really stood out as a scintillating expression of the 2017 vintage, and the Les Combes, en Creots and en Montceau were not far behind. Generally, I probably found more “bite” amongst the 2016s last year, but the 2017s are still very fine examples of the appellation and excellent value. Of course, the Montrachet is a brilliant wine, though a recent sensational 2009 was a reminder that it benefits from bottle age. Damien uses DIAM throughout his range.