2015 Meursault Les Charmes 1er Cru

Pierre-Yves Colin told me he picked when he did “because the stems were already brown—in fact, I’ve never picked with my wood as brown as in 2015.” He went on: “At the end, the maturity came from loss of water, and the evaporation also preserved the acidity in the grapes.” Colin harvested Bourgogne on September 1, then went on to his top appellations the next day. Sugar levels ranged from 12.2% to 13.3% and he did not add sugar. “We were never worried about the balance of the wines because the fruit was perfectly clean,” he told me. Still, as he had new equipment and a new winemaking facility at the foot of the village of Chassagne-Montrachet, he carried out a triage to eliminate green grapes and any that had been affected by oidium.

His new cellar is naturally cold, and Colin is taking advantage of his new facility to slow down the development of his wines. His Chassagne-Montrachet cuvées mostly completed their malolactic transformations in April and May but some of the Meursaults were not yet finished. Colin told me that the 2015s remind him of the 2003s in the way they resist oxidation. “I suspect the acidity levels are quite low but they don’t affect the balance of the wines.”

Incidentally, Colin’s wines are now 80% from estate fruit. His recent purchases of vines have included some Puligny-Montrachet La Garenne in 2012, Chassagne-Montrachet Abbaye de Morgeot in 2014, and another piece of Saint-Aubin La Chatenière to enlarge this cuvée. He has also bought more Hautes-Côtes de Beaune, as well as some Saint-Aubin Les Perrières in 2013, mostly from his aunt.