2021 Saint-Véran En Creche

I made my way to the village of La Roche-Vineuse to call in on the avuncular Olivier Merlin, who began back in 1987 when he rented 4.5 hectares with his wife, Corinne. Naturally, there comes a time when the reins are handed over, and his sons, Théo and Paul, are now taking prominent roles after finishing their studies. Yet, it was still Merlin Senior who guided me through the latest releases from their 11.26 hectares of organically cultivated vines that include their parcels in Moulin-à-Vent in Beaujolais. “The 2021 vintage was the lowest yield at 7hL/ha,” Merlin tells me, before adding to my surprise, “and the highest 66hL/ha. This is because, since 2019, we have experimented with a new technique from Switzerland where we prune double Guyot and make an arch like normal but leave one cane so that if there is some frost, it’s like insurance. It’s a lot of work as you have a lot of growth, plus you cannot do it every year as it takes away a lot of energy from the vine. But it worked really well. We could see that some of our neighbors had nothing. You have a mixture of normal and ripe grapes, so it is difficult to express the terroir, much like we had in 1998. We did no fining and only used SO2 [to protect the wines]. One change is that because we had so many small cuvées, we changed the system of filtration from Kieselguhr. We now use a very light lenticular filtration that we will continue from most of the cuvées.”

Like other producers, Merlin’s 2021s are a tad more up and down, though an experienced winemaker like him will not panic when things are looking bleak. His Pouilly-Fuissé Premier Crus are very consistent wines that deserve their elevated status. Just a couple of Mâcon-Villages seems to miss a bit of matière.