2018 Corton Grand Cru

It was my maiden visit to Maison Harbour on the outskirts of Savigny-lès-Beane. Nicolas Harbour filled me in on his backstory, his wife and he pursuing unfulfilling alternative careers before relocating down to his parents’ house in Beaune, undertaking viticultural studies and most crucially, training for five years down the road with Jean-Marc and Hugues Pavelot. His first vintage under Maison Harbour was his 2013. "My aim was always to get close to half-and-half Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and we just about achieved that in 2019," Harbour told me. "The 2018 vintage was early. The challenge was to pick at the right time. One of my contracted growers was on the beach when I telephoned to tell him that we needed to pick the next day. It was lucky we have built good relationships and he came back. We were able to pick many plots with a small team before contracted growers commenced the main harvest. The alcohol levels are around 13.0% to 13.5%. I used no new oak for the white. I would love to try but we would need [to vinify] more than six barrels for me to have the confidence to do that." This was a promising set of wines that showed Nicolas Harbour has learned his winemaking chops. I felt that he has sufficient control over his contracted growers to create the wines he wanted and avoid the pitfalls of the 2018 growing season in terms of picking too late. The only cuvée that I have question marks over is his perplexing Gevrey-Chambertin La Combe Aux Moines. As I opined to an equally perplexed winemaker, perhaps one of his barrels was not clean enough and seemed to compromise the freshness of the wine. It will be interesting to revisit this in bottle.