2018 Bourgogne Côte d’Or

I have been visiting Domaine Michel Gros for over 20 years now. On this occasion he introduced me to his son Pierre Gros who joined in January. "We started the picking on 4 September and harvested in five days and then restarted 10-17 September to pick the Hautes-Côtes de Nuits," Michel Gros told me. "The temperatures were high: 2°C higher than normal during the vegetative cycle. It was also dry, especially between August and September, which explains the higher maturity levels. The wines needed hardly any sorting apart from the hailed-upon parcels in the Hautes Côtes de Nuits. Half the production there was lost on 15 July and so I used [his brother] Bernard Gros’s optical sorting machine to eradicate those damaged berries. Otherwise it was a normal yield around 45hl/ha. The 2018 is like 2003 in terms of style but with better acidity and in 2018 there are no berries that were burnt by the sun since the warmth came gradually. The wines are sufficiently concentrated for long-term ageing. The alcohol levels is between 13% and 14% even though the alcohol potential increased by 1.5% in a week in September."