2016 Côte-Rôtie Fontgeant

Two thousand sixteen delivered what must be the most graceful and aromatically expressive set of wines that I have yet tasted from this important domaine, which is now named simply Stéphane Ogier. In Ogier’s view, 2016 “is a vintage that should be enjoyable at every stage of its life and that life should be quite long, longer than many people think.” No, it isn’t 2015, “but what is? 2010, maybe?” Ogier mused. The oak presence of the wines here has been dialed back dramatically over the years and Stéphane Ogier has now moved completely to using demi-muids and foudres with an eye to “making sure that each vineyard can express itself with as little in the way as possible.”

The ever-restless Stéphane Ogier is making some of the finest wines in the entire Rhône valley, the north as well as the south. Ogier is currently obsessing on his relatively new single-site bottlings because he wants “to learn the maximum potential expression of each lieu-dit and how they can all work together to make a better classic Côte-Rôtie.” To that end he makes very little of these wines as he doesn’t want to take the guts out of the Mon Village, especially the Réserve bottlings. Ogier feels that the strength of 2016 “is its expressive minerality and floral character. The wines are extremely elegant and a great contrast to the massiveness of the 2015s”. He thinks his 2016s will be best for drinking “way before the 2015s but that doesn’t mean that they won’t age well. They will, on their balance and energy.”