2014 Pommard Les Grands Epenots 1er Cru

“A vintage for purists” is the way winemaker Eric Germain described the 2014 reds “The wines are energetic and aerienne and firmly tannic, but they don’t have the amplitude or sweetness of the ‘15s But the ‘14s will last a long time; it’s not really a vintage to drink early” Yields were similar in the two vintages, but Girardin’s Volnay vineyards had to deal with widespread hail in 2014 Among the Volnays, Germain vinified only the Pitures and Champans with a portion of their stems (about 30%)

“A vintage for purists” is the way winemaker Eric Germain described the 2014 reds. “The wines are energetic and aerienne and firmly tannic, but they don’t have the amplitude or sweetness of the ‘15s. But the ‘14s will last a long time; it’s not really a vintage to drink early.” Yields were similar in the two vintages, but Girardin’s Volnay vineyards had to deal with widespread hail in 2014. Among the Volnays, Germain vinified only the Pitures and Champans with a portion of their stems (about 30%).

According to enologist Eric Germain, 2014 was a complicated vintage for two reasons:“We needed to wait for ripeness but we also had to be concerned about the flies. ” Luckily, he went on, most of the estate’s parcels produced small yields of around 25 hectoliters per hectare in 2014. That was constructive for ripening the remaining grapes and the well-aerated clusters were less attractive to the flies. “We did a major trie in the vines at the harvest with ten teams of pickers, then used a vibrating table to eliminate dried berries,” he told me in December. With the exception of one wine the fruit was entirely destemmed, and another table, with an optical sorter, was used to eliminate split, overripe and underripe grapes.

Germain told me that since 2009, he has done very little pigeage, just three times per cuvée during the three weeks the wines spend on their skins (including a week of pre-fermentation cold soak). Germain did very little chaptalization in 2014; some of the wines, he said, were not touched. All of the Girardin reds are now aged in one-third new oak.