2015 Romanée-Saint-Vivant Grand Cru

Sébastien Cathiard reported that on September 5 his fruit “had decent sugars but not yet phenolic maturity.” The grapes started tasting good on September 9, he went on, but his harvesting team was scheduled to begin on the 12th. So, in the end, he picked quickly on the 12th, 13th and 14th, with potential alcohol ranging from 12.5% to 13.5% and “good tartaric acidity.” He elucidated: “I would rather have started on September 9 but it was better to begin on the 12th than on the 5th.”

Very little sorting was required, said Cathiard, who destems all of his fruit. He carried out an extended 10-to-12-day cold soak at 10 degrees C., which results in some intracellular fermentation before the yeasts start their work. Cathiard told me he worked “more by remontages in the morning and evening, and even though he did not punchdowns at the beginning, each cuvée eventually received 6 to 13 pigeages.

Cathiard’s ‘15s are evolving very slowly. As his cellar remained during the spring of 2016, the malos were very late (his last two barrels of Malconsorts only finished two weeks before my December visit) and none of the wines had been racked yet. They will spend their second winter in fûts. Cathiard noted that he has had virtually no issues with reduction because there were so few vineyard treatments during the summer. He considers 2015 to be “a great vintage in terms of material, phenolic ripeness and acidity,” pointing out that his vines in Vosne-Romanée did not suffer from drought. “The wines do not have the heaviness of the 2009s.”