2015 Côte-Rôtie Réserve

“Richer than 2010 and fresher than 2009” is the way Stéphane Ogier summed up the 2015 vintage. “Plus, the growing season gave a good yield and it isn’t often that high quality and a healthy crop happen together.” Ogier was one of a number of producers who cautioned that those looking for typicity in the 2015s “will have to be patient, because they’re going to be all about the fruit for a while, like maybe even a decade.” Wine lovers who seriously prize finesse are really going to go for the 2016 vintage, he predicts, and an extensive tour of his barrels from that vintage before I tackled the ‘15s put me in solid agreement with that sentiment. The wines are lively and pure, with a lighter touch and, at this very young stage, showing more red fruit and floral character than their 2015 siblings—“sort of a cross of 2010 and 2014,” as Ogier put it.

The wines here are always concentrated, powerful and fruit-driven but I never find them to be overtly burly or leaning too far toward dark fruit, much less superripe. Ogier told me that he studiously avoids overextraction, “especially in a vintage like ’15,” and that he has been pursuing a more vibrant style of red wine for some time now. He credits his increased work with Condrieu for a greater appreciation of finesse and a lighter touch but said that the real key to making fresh wines “is to spend a lot of time and work like crazy in the vines to make sure that the fruit is optimally ripe and clean, so you don’t have to do very much work with it after it has been picked.” He noted that people talk a lot about farming and how the wine is made in the vineyard, adding that “this is true, but it’s amazing how many people still try to fix their vineyard issues in the cellar, and they do know better.”