2017 Côte de Nuits-Villages

My call at Sylvie Esmonin is always a brief one, since she only has five cuvées, although when one of them is Clos Saint-Jacques, I can’t complain too much. It ostensibly forms Esmonin’s back garden, and her dog, as usual, was tearing up and down the slope, weaving in and out of the vines. As I quipped, it’s a shame she can’t train him to pick fruit.

“We picked relatively late, on September 11,” Esmonin told me. “There was hardly any chaptalisation, just 0.3° for the Gevrey-Chambertin Village. I used just a little less whole bunches this year, but apart from that, it was a normal vinification. What I like about the vintage is that the Bourgogne Rouge is the Bourgogne Rouge, the Clos Saint-Jacques is Clos Saint-Jacques and so on. I feel it is a classic vintage.”

Esmonin’s style might be classed as more modern: deep colour, black fruit, grippy tannin and a riper style that renders her Clos Saint-Jacques easy to pick out blind. You could compare it stylistically with, say, Domaine Christian Sérafin or maybe Dugat-Py. It is not a style for those seeking lighter red fruit or transparency in their Pinot Noir and incontrovertibly the wines require time in bottle, but they can be worth waiting for.