2015 Echézeaux Grand Cru

“Every vintage is the year of the century but this time it’s true,” said Mounir Saouma only half in jest about vintage 2016. Like a few of his colleagues, he compared ’16 and ’15 to ’10 and ’09, noting that ’15 and ’09 gave us our most mature grapes ever but that “in ’16 and ’10 we were surprised at the successful results.” He went on: “People learned from their mistakes in 2009 and did better in 2015; in this very warm vintage, many very fresh, fine wines were made. The ‘16s were born by Caesarean: the baby was not sitting well, mom was hysterical and the doctors were in panic. So we cut out the baby and he’s a genius.”

The key in 2016, said Saouma, is how to bring out the tannins and keep enough energy without allowing the wines to dry out by the time they go into bottle. “There’s a fresh, mineral aspect to the vintage, but I'm a bit concerned that if we make wines with tannins that are too supple, we’ll lose length, but if we go in the direction of tannins, we risk having dry wines.” Still, he maintained that alcohol levels are “classical” (i.e., below 13.5%) and that acidity levels and pHs are good. In fact, he went on, the 2016 tannins are fuller-bodied than those of the ‘15s, which since the beginning he has considered a bit soft and fragile. “With the ‘16s, you can do anything you want to the tannins. The wines are not sensitive by nature, although there was a lot of sameness at the beginning. We started with fresh, crisp, clean, almost underripe grapes, and we had to extract in order for the wines to express terroir. And of course the tannins of 2016 will soften with longer élevage.” He went on: “Even for producers who torture their wines by racking, pumping and fining them and by bottling early, the tannins of ’16 will give their wines some protection, but 2015s made this way really suffered. The ‘16s are about black fruits and spices but they also have flesh. There’s also an impression of acidulation—almost a flash of citrus—from the not-quite-ripe grape skins. It’s a vintage that’s full of life.”

Interestingly, Saouma managed to make four more barrels of wine in 2016 than he did in 2015. One explanation is that some producers who normally have, for example, six barrels of a given wine only had two in ’16. Rather than sell one barrel to Saouma and age a single pièce in their own cellar, they found it simpler to sell both barrels to Saouma. None of the ‘16s had been racked at the time of my visit and the wines were very low in sulfur. (And several reds hadn’t even started their malolactic fermentations.)

“Two thousand fifteen is a trap,” announced Mounir Saouma before we tasted his large and splendid range of red wines. “The skins were very sensitive due to the very high maturity of the grapes. Is 2015 a strong vintage or is it a sensitive vintage? Some growers assumed that the sunny summer meant strong grape skins. If you thought the fruit was strong, you racked, sulfured and tortured the wines and they will always show the effect of that treatment."

Saouma, who is concerned about the potential fragility of the 2015s as well as their possible overripeness, believes that the vintage will have a natural tendency to evolve quickly. “We fought with our suppliers to chill their barrels and slow down the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations [Saouma is an éleveur, who purchases barrels of wines from his suppliers and takes possession of them during the winter following the harvest, in virtually every instance still with their original lees]. The 2015s must be handled like babies, not like monsters. They don’t have the solid bones of 2014 or 2012. There will be two kinds of 2015s: those that were essentially finished before Christmas (of 2015) and the later style, which will be much more serious and long-lived. As a general rule, people who made great 2009s are likely to have made great 2015s. This vintage had fine skins and not a lot of hard tannins, just like the '15s, and those who had late malos and allowed their wines to age quietly for 18 months or so made the best wines. Those who did the opposite--malo before Christmas followed by early racking and SO2 additions--made tasters feel the alcohol and start saying 'maybe these were picked late'."

In Saouma’s cold cellar, the 2015 malos did not generally start until the late spring of 2016, while others only finished during that year’s harvest. None of the wines had yet been racked or sulfured when I sampled them from barrel in December. “The biggest challenge with the 2015s is to maintain finesse,” said Saouma, who does not think that these wines will ever completely shut down, owing to their balance. “Right now the impression of dry extract in the 2015s is muffled by their substantial ripe tannins,” he added.