2015 Volnay Clos des Ducs 1er Cru

The harvest of 2016 put a bit of wine back in what was a virtually empty cellar, but it will take a few more healthy crops for this estate to catch up with demand for its bottles. Guillaume d’Angerville told me that the average yield for his domain in 2016 was 27 hectoliters per hectare, but that his flagship Clos des Ducs holding produced a “normal” yield while there was virtually no Aligoté, Volnay villages or Volnay Clos des Angles. “So while we lost 35% of our volume, we didn’t lose 35% of the value of our wines,” he summarized.

The estate started harvesting on September 22 with grape sugars around 13% and régisseur François Duvivier did not chaptalize. Despite the full levels of alcohol and the fact that pHs were higher in '16 than in '15, ranging from 3.3 to 3.5, d’Angerville pointed out that energy is a key trait of the 2016 vintage. The malolactic fermentations finished between July and September, after which the wines were racked. This estate, by the way, has never vinified with whole clusters. “We don’t even do experiments,” said d’Angerville. “We’re minimalists who want the fruit and only the fruit.” He added that his father and grandfather also destemmed their fruit “but really only about 85% of it due to the lower quality of their destemmer.”

The couple of finished 2015s I tasted were of transcendent quality, but d’Angerville was not quite ready to deem the vintage extraordinary—or even superior to 2016. “There may be a snobbism to say that 2016 is better than ‘15 but I find it hard to compare two vintages that are so recent.” Needless to say, the ‘15s are already sold out here, as this estate’s wines have become highly popular international collectibles and available quantities have been microscopic in recent years.

Although there’s nothing extreme about the extraction here (a cold soak at a moderate 12 degrees C. lasting three or four days, zero pigeages and two quick remontages per day), the estate’s 2015s show nearly Syrah-like color, not to mention outstanding density and silkiness. Crop levels in 2015 were not much higher than those of 2014—“in the mid to high 20s,” according to Guillaume d’Angerville, owing to the drought and to the lingering effects of three years of hailstorms. “The dark colors are only evidence of the sun and drought in 2015,” he noted. “And the sun hasn’t impacted the wines in a negative way.” The estate started harvesting on September 4, bringing in its fruit with potential alcohol between 13% and 13.5%, which d’Angerville described as “high in historical terms but standard for recent years.”

The malolactic fermentations were “all over the place,” according to d’Angerville, with the earliest cuvées finishing in May and a couple just winding down at the time of my November visit. The bottling will be at the estate’s regular time: in March and April of 2017. “Most people want to compare 2015 with 2009 or 2005 but that would be a mistake,” said d’Angerville. “The 2015s show a rare combination of density and refinement; in comparison, the 2005s were more exuberant at a similar stage of their development.” The post-malo pHs in 2015 are closer to 3.4 than to 3.5, according to d'Angerville, "or close to the level of the 2010s." Indeed, the best 2015 Volnays at this address are among the rare Côte de Beaune examples that are at the same exalted level of quality as the top wines of the Côte de Nuits.