2016 Meursault Les Perrières 1er Cru

Elsa Matrot noted that the estate’s Bourgogne and village Meursault vines suffered heavily from the frost in 2016, and that “there’s a huge difference in richness between frosted and non-frosted wines in 2016.” She added that she likes the balance of the premier crus in 2016, which she attributes at least partly to the fact that the year featured a more normal mid-September harvest. While she generally finds “more acidity at the tip of the tongue in the 2017s” (due to higher levels of tartaric acidity?), she finds “more material and richness on the finish of the ‘16s.” But she also likes the precision of the ‘16s.

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.