2017 Côte-Rôtie Fontgeant

Stephane Ogier has moved completely away from the use of barriques to demi-muids and foudres for raising his wines. He told me that he has no interest in oak "having any influence on the wines. Oak is a common denominator" he told me. "I want the wines to be as expressive as possible of their origin and too much new wood has a real way of masking that." Ogier now owns just over 11 hectares of vines in Côte-Rôtie, with substantial holdings in the appellation's most esteemed lieux-dits. Ogier has recently begun bottling small lots of those sites on their own in a terroir-expression project. Unfortunately, when I say "small lots" I mean extremely small lots. On the subject of his 2017s, Stephane Ogier told me that “it was essential to pay attention to getting fruit with too much ripeness.” He said he wasn’t concerned so much with structure “because the berries and bunches were very small so tannins weren’t going to be an issue, it was more about acidity and keeping freshness.” The wines, he thinks, are very deep and powerful, “with lots of dark fruit character” and he added that they’ll be pleasurable on the early side, with the ability but not the requirement to age. “If aging is important that’s what we have 2015 for,” he noted. The 2015s are definitely hands-off material now and in need of at least another 10 years or so of patience given their depth and structure.