2017 Fixin Village

Drouhin-Laroze is at a transitional stage. Many Burgundy-lovers’ perceptions are based on historical vintages that tended to be a bit heavy-handed and, dare I say, predictable. Recent wines overseen by Caroline and Nicolas Drouhin are cut from a very different cloth. The domaine always presided over an enviable array of Premier and Grand Crus – no fewer than six of the latter – so potential was enormous. Mirroring the likes of Duroché, Heresztyn-Mazzini, Claude Dugat and so forth, they have adopted a more prudent and respectful approach to winemaking, picking a little earlier, easing off the skin maceration and employing whole bunches and dialing down the new oak, inter alia. The result is a range of far superior and more interesting wines than just five or six years ago. The market has not quite cottoned on to that – yet.

“There was temptation to make a large volume after 2016,” Caroline Drouhin told me. “We did a green harvest in mid-July and occasionally in mid-August. You could have had up to 12 to 14 bunches per vine in the regional appellations. Then we did a lot of selection on the sorting table once we started picking on September 6. We finished on September 15. We did a bit of chaptalisation, but nothing more than 0.5° alcohol.”

Drouhin-Laroze is one of the few that provide printed growing season summaries (I don’t know why more domaines don’t make them – they are very useful and save a great deal of answering the same old questions.) One interesting fact that I gleaned from this summary is that here, the rain deficit stood at 52mm by the beginning of summer, extending to 200mm in some areas by the end of that arid season. Those figures underline the importance of that 20-30mm of rain at the end of August. Not everything offered by Drouhin-Laroze in 2017 hits the target, but what I appreciate is that there is clear thinking towards each and every cuvée, a resolve to approach each one individually, whether that is adding whole bunch or de-stemming, raising the percentage of new oak or dialling it down. When they do hit the target, the results are thrilling – for example, the Lavaut-Saint-Jacques and Clos Prieur, two outstanding Gevrey Premier Crus that give the Grand Crus a run for their money. The Latricières-Chambertin outshines that Chapelle-Chambertin; the Clos de Vougeot is top-drawer and the Musigny is imbued with a sense of nobility that seemed rationed in previous years. A couple of cuvées do not quite hit their mark – such as the Chambertin Clos-de-Bèze, which felt a little anonymous. Yet there are hidden gems like the rarely seen Gevrey En Closeau, which feels very precise and complex. This is a producer finding its new way and heading in the right direction, creating better wines than ever before.