2016 Chassagne-Montrachet Les Embrazées 1er Cru

Vincent Morey considers 2016 to be a great year for red wines but a vintage of average maturity (12% to 12.5% potential alcohol before a full degree of chaptalization) for Chardonnay. He made just half of a normal crop and finds the wines to be "charming and fresh." Morey noted that it was hard to eliminate the second-generation grapes that formed after the frost but that there weren't many of them.

The malos finished by the end of January and the wines had been sulfited about six weeks before I tasted them; a few wines had been racked. Morey told me that the '16s have about 4 grams per liter of acidity now, or a touch more than the '15s, which he described as "good, easygoing wines." Morey is usually among the last pickers in Chassagne-Montrachet and this tendency may cost his wines some of their minerality. For his part, he believes that his colleagues are harvesting too early.