2017 Chassagne-Montrachet Les Embrazées 1er Cru

At the outset of our tasting in early June, Vincent Morey described 2017 as “a good vintage for white wines, rich like 2015 but with freshness more like 2014.” By the end, though, he was even more enthusiastic, calling ’17 “ a great year, for longer aging than ’15.” Morey began harvesting on September 4, with grape sugars ranging from 12.7% to 13.5%. He is clearly a fan of Chardonnay in a riper, higher-octane style, noting that he doesn’t like citrus aromas because he doesn’t feel that that kind of wine ages well. And he’s happier to bottle wines with 13.5% alcohol than with 13%, often relying on chaptalization to reach this level, as he believes that the higher alcohol gives the wines more structure to support aging. Morey told me that the maximum permitted yields in 2017 were 60 and 57 hectoliters per hectare for village wines and premier crus, respectively, and that his yields were mostly between 55 and 57. He did a total of five punchdowns per cuvée for the ’17s, stopping when the malos finished in late autumn, and he plans to bottle his crus in mid-November.