2013 Meursault Les Narvaux

I had the chance to taste with Charles Jobard, as his son Rémi had family obligations on Pentecost Monday at the end of May. Charles told me that Rémi started vinifying the family's wines in 1992 at the tender age of 21. He also noted that the estate has had three consecutive years with about half a normal crop, as Meursault was especially hard-hit by hail in 2014. The 2013s here were showing very well, considering that they had been bottled about three months prior to my visit.

I was intrigued to hear Jobard Sr's. take on the estate's modern style and earlier harvesting under his son's regime. As we tasted a very perfumed, floral Bourgogne Blanc from 2013, he noted that, "in the old days our customers would have found this wine green." Indeed, Charles Jobard is not the only Burgundy oldtimer who fondly recalls the thick, yellow, less squeaky-clean but more extract-rich white Burgundies of the '70s and '80s.

Jobard told me he picked early in 2012 and late in 2013, starting at the beginning of October in the latter year. Still, he describes his 2012s as less bracing than his 2010s and thinks they will drink earlier but last well. And he finds the 2013s to be concentrated, "like the 2012s." He actually feared that the wines would be too high in acidity but noted that they're not turning out that way. "The small crop in 2013 allowed for good material," he told me, "and we had clean grapes due to our organic farming." Jobard began using foudres and a few barriques from the Austrian cooper Stockinger in 2007 and now uses these barrels almost exclusively, although he pointed out that they're made from a blend of French, German and Austrian oak. Just a couple of Jobard's 2013s had finished their malolactic fermentations at the time of my late-spring visit, so my notes for most of these wines should be viewed as provisional.