2015 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru

Eric Germain told me he was pessimistic about the 2016 whites at the beginning but is happy with the vintage today. “It’s a classic year with healthy skins and no rot,” he reported in early June. “The only difference from other years is a lack of depth due to moderate ripeness. The skins are not as ripe as in 2015, which can give some of the wines a slightly herbaceous quality, but they really don’t have any faults. It’s not a little vintage but it’s not great either.” There wasn’t much surmaturité and potential alcohol levels ranged from 12.3% up to 13.1, said Germain.

The village and generic wines were most affected by frost in 2016, Germain told me, adding that he’s happiest with his wines from Puligny-Montrachet, which he believes are more elegant in style and show clearly terroir character. Somehow, he made all of the normal Girardin cuvées in ’16, although quantities of some of them were tiny, requiring him to make use of feuillettes, the small 112-liter barrels commonly found in Chablis cellars, although less frequently nowadays. The malolactic fermentations were mostly finished—or almost finished—but not all of the wines had been sulfured. Germain planned to assemble them in December and bottle next March.

Germain prefers 2015 to 2016 as he finds the earlier set of wines more minerally. “The 2016s are more facile, more flatteur, but 2015 is great. Owing to their moderate density, the ‘16s should probably be drunk in the next six or seven years, before the ‘15s, which are also higher in acidity.” Germain added that he loves the 2014 whites but thinks the ‘15s are better. “They’re powerful, rich wines that will be great with food, while the 2014s are more minerally and taut.”

Enologist Eric Germain considers 2014 to be one of his best vintages yet at Vincent Girardin but he also likes 2015, which he describes as riper and denser than the ‘14s. “The 2015s have good balance,” he explained, “and the Chardonnay grapes were the healthiest I’ve ever seen. The wines started off fat but are now showing more tension.” He believes that the ‘15s will be good young and old. “They’re generous but they have vitality, and there’s a lot of dry extract to support aging. A lot of people crushed some of their fruit to get more lees, which have given the wines a positive bitterness, a note of gentian, which for me is a very positive sign for aging. We also took this approach in 2015 because our grapes were ripe and clean."

Girardin started harvesting on August 28 with a small team, beginning with their degenerating vines and those planted on SO4 rootstock, which ripen relatively quickly. They sent out a larger group of pickers on September 3. All of the malolactic fermentations had finished by the time of my annual visit, most of them at the end of March or beginning of April. Alcohol levels for the crus average 13.3% or 13.4% without chaptalization, which Germain described as “a bit higher than in recent years but not extreme."