2011 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru

The estate's Chassagne-Montrachet Chenevottes, Chevalier-Montrachet and Batard-Montrachet were hit hard by the June hail storm in 2012, as were the domain's adjacent village parcels, noted Niellon's son-in-law Michel Coutoux. The "terrible" flowering also sharply cut the potential size of the crop in 2012.Yields were quite low and partly for this reason Coutoux describes the very concentrated 2012s as "almost too much.They have heavy aromas almost like the 2003s."He added that he prefers both 2011 and 2010.He told me he thinks he picked four or five days too late in 2012 and lost some Burgundy typicity and acidity.The 2012 Batard and Chevalier weigh in at 13.8% and 14% alcohol, respectively.For both of these wines, I preferred the 2011 version at the end of May.But it's early days for the young 2012s.The malos finished three months ago and the wines were sulfited in March but were still on their lees.

Back in the days when Michel Niellon aged his wines under his house in the center of Chassagne-Montrachet, no doubt the malos in a vintage like 2011 would have been over by Christmas.But in his much cooler warehouse space on the edge of town, some of the secondary fermentations lingered as late as April, according to son-in-law Michel Coutoux.The estate started picking on the first day of September, bringing in generous yields and potential alcohol levels ranging from 12% to as high as 13.4%.Most of the village wines were chaptalized liberally, but less so for the premier crus.Coutoux noted that the family also harvested early in 2010, obtaining good acidity and tiny, complex grapes that had recently lost a bit percentage of their water.Owing to the late malos, some of the 2010s were bottled in October of 2011.In the original cramped cellar, all of the wines had to be finished prior to the next vintage simply for reasons of limited space.Coutoux described 2010 as "my favorite white wine vintage since I started here in 1988.The wines have everything:energy, acidity, length.We lacked only quantity in 2010."