2018 Côte de Nuits-Villages

Given the wide range of wines under Domaine Tawse and their négociant arm "Marchand-Tawse", I needed two or three hours to go through the entirety of their range with the ever-garrulous Pascal Marchand and Mark Fincham. “The 2018 was a lot about picking dates," Fincham told me. "We picked early, for example, the Beaunes picked the first week of September and the Gevrey crus around 8 September and the Gevrey Lavaux on the 9 September. There was beautiful phenolic ripeness. The malic and tartaric acid was low, so you had to be careful as there was a lot of ripeness, so it was important to pick before phenolic ripeness. By picking it fractionally early we kept very good acidity. By the Monday or Tuesday the alcohol had gone up to around 14° whereas at the weekend it was 13.4°. We finished the picking on 11 September." Fincham offered a useful and interesting view upon why it is vital to maintain acidity. "If you lose the acidity then you lose part of the information. You can acidify but there is nothing better than natural tartaric acid. The only time I acidify is if I am doing a cold fermentation and want to protect it against bacterial infection."