2015 Meursault Les Perrières 1er Cru

Two thousand sixteen was Thierry Matrot’s daughters Elsa and Adèle's first vinification, and the estate lost up to 80% of its normal production to the spring frost. (The family bought some Chablis and Côte Chalonnaise fruit to make up for some of their losses.) The harvest began on September 20 and grape sugars ranged from 12.1% to 13%. Some of the lighter wines were chaptalized a half degree but not those with 13% natural alcohol. Elsa and Adèle noted that the ‘16s finished very dry, especially compared to the ‘15s, some of which have between 1.5 and 2 grams per liter residual sugar. They told me that they find no fragility in the ‘16s and pointed out that they did some light micro-oxidation for their Charmes and Blagny as these wines tend to be reduced.

The 2016 malos were finished by January and the wines were sulfured about two weeks before my visit. Only the Bourgogne Blanc had been racked but all of these ‘16s are slated to be bottled before the 2017 harvest.

Thierry Matrot, who assumed winemaking duties at the family domain in 1983, considers 1990 and 1985 his top vintages “for both colors,” but he believes that 2015 may be in that class; he compares these wines to the ’90 whites.

The ‘15s possess strong dry extract, he told me, “almost too much, owing to the hydric stress. But there was much more hydric stress in 2005, and the 2015s are much more exuberant wines. Matrot bottled his Puligny-Montrachet Les Chalumeaux and Meursault Blagny, which he described as particularly glyceral and fat, in November of 2016, a couple months after the rest of the ‘15s.

Thierry Matrot told me he had “a good Chardonnay crop in 2015 but not an enormous one—and just half a crop in Pinot Noir, but still way up from the three previous years.” In this very sunny, dry growing season, Meursault was lucky to have had 60 millimeters of rain in mid-June, and the plants did not suffer during the July heat wave. When some hydric stress began in mid-August, the vines were once again rescued by 35 millimeters of rain in two days, Matrot added. “This is definitely not 2003,” he summarized. “The wines have freshness, minerality and terroir character. They show a grapefruit aspect. They’re not particularly flattering now but I like their almost bitter edge; they have ‘an angular fatness’.” Matrot expressed the opinion that in 2015, the wines’ minerality brought a measure of bitterness, while in 2014 it brought salinity. The 2015s will be bottled with alcohol between 13.5% and 14%, with acidity levels generally between 3.9 and 4.0 grams per liter.