2015 Beaune Grèves 1er Cru

Along with a few of their neighbors in Volnay, such as Domaine d’Angerville, the Lafarges have had great difficulty meeting the demands of their loyal clients in recent years. During the five vintages from 2012 through 2016, said Frédéric Lafarge, the estate has produced the equivalent of 1.75 harvests, and yields were down 70% in 2016. Although Lafarge described 2016 as a complicated year, noting that “we’ve never before seen a frost that went as high up in the premier crus,” he finds the wines to be “joyous, with pure fruit and mineral tension, great charm and depth, and very subtle, enrobed tannins.” He added that the wines are well-balanced and that he doesn’t see any obvious differences between those made from a tiny crop level of 10 hectoliters per hectare and those made from 25.

The '16s had been racked in August but were still on their fine lees in barrel in January, with the bottling scheduled for April.

Frédéric Lafarge described the beginning of the 2015 growing season as “small” owing to vines that had been fatigued by the hail events of recent years. “But then the summer was ideal, with little rains at the right time and virtually no hydric stress,” he added. The Lafarges picked the equivalent of half a crop of healthy grapes between September 5 and 10, with potential alcohol levels between 12.8% and 13.1%; they did not chaptalize. The wines were still on their fine lees in December following racking in September and the bottling was slated for April.

Frédéric considers 2015 to be “a fabulous vintage: pure, precise wines with terroir that’s easy to taste, and built for long aging.” He told me that his father compares 2015 to 1929, noting that Michel was born in 1928. I was blown away by the Lafarge 2015s, which have the intensity, complexity and structure of top bottlings from the Côte de Nuits. The Volnay premier crus in particular boast wonderfully tangy red-fruit aromatics for the vintage.