2021 Saint-Romain Village

Last time I visited Domaine Ponsot, last May, was to participate in a dazzling vertical that is still tapping its fingers, waiting to be written up. Readers will have that to look forward to next year. In the meantime, 2021 is in the spotlight, with a couple of 2020s thrown in for good measure. “We had frost in April, except for just a handful of parcels in Gevrey-Chambertin,” Alexandre Abel explains from their lofty tasting room overlooking the construction site that is Morey-Saint-Denis. “The slopes of Morey-Saint-Denis were heavily affected, more than 50% of the production destroyed. We used candles in the vineyard, but the frost was too strong. The heavy snow meant that the buds were completely saturated, plus it was a very long frost episode throughout the entire day, with -6° Celsius and a lot of wind. A week later, you could really see the damage. Springtime was not so good, cold, so the vines grew sluggishly. At least the flowering was quick and even, over within three days. One of the few positive points of the season. The summer was mostly the same, inclement, quite wet and not so warm, so grapes ripened very slowly with constant disease pressure, oïdium more than rot. We lost 10-15% from this. The weather changed a little at the end of August, and we could wait to try and obtain perfect ripeness as we didn’t want to chaptalize. The age of the vine and its location were important; the skins were quite thin for the younger vines. So we started picking on 29 September through to 4 October, quite quick due to the quantity, but we had to be careful to sort perfectly. It was a small quantity, 25% of a normal year, while Gevrey was average. The fermentation was normal, just being careful with any contamination from bacteria. Finally, the colour came quite easily depending on the parcel. Due to the small volumes, we used the half barrel of Clos de la Roche to top up the four barrels of the Morey-Saint-Denis Premier Cru. Everything was de-stemmed, which is the philosophy of the domaine. The 2021s have turned out nicely since spring 2022; you never know if they will turn out green or hard, but we managed to get fine balance and acidity, whilst not necessarily being light-bodied.”

Ponsot is a notoriously late picker, and in the past, mainly due to the end of Laurent Ponsot’s tenure, I felt that the fruit was being picked too late, resulting in “squishy” fruit unbefitting the terroir. That tenet doesn’t seem to have changed, though in a cooler growing season such as 2021, that played to their advantage. This is a fine set of wines, particularly their Chapelle-Chambertin, with a very nice Corton-Bressandes and a sublime Morey-Saint-Denis Cuvée des Allouettes.