Description
Neal Martin, The Wine Advocate, 31st Dec 2015
The 2014 Corton Bressandes Grand Cru, which suffered a one-hectare loss because of hail, has a crisp bouquet with leafy red berry fruit, autumnal and quite graceful. The palate is medium-bodied, quite rounded in the mouth, and showing some new oak here, especially on the cocoa-tinged finish. This just appears a little out of sorts at the moment, so I will taste this later as it did go through a late malolactic.
“Edouard Labruyere has his fingers in a lot of pies, whether it is Beaujolais, Pomerol, Burgundy or more recently Champagne. How does he find time? My theory is that Edouard has been cloned, but I’ve no proof…yet. Still, however busy as he is, he remains one of the friendliest and wittiest proprietors, and he’s really done some quite wonderful things in Meursault at Domaine Jacques Prieur. Still, that does not preclude him from some significant challenges at the domaine…
“On June 28 we lost almost 65% of production,” he told me with typical nonchalance, as if he had just lost his car keys (although apparently I react as if I have just lost my entire crop whenever I lose mine). “Having vineyards in the Cote de Beaune and Cote de Nuits, I thought it would be some kind of insurance. If one was affected by hail, then I would still have the other. I don’t think like that anymore. Now I know that whatever happens…I will be impacted! We were quite happy as the spring was fine with good humidity. There was a great flowering except at the end. Then there was the hail. We lost 100% of Beaune Champ-Pimont. Then with regard to the Pommard Les Charmots that I bought in 2013…we produced no wine in 2013 and no wine in 2014. It was not one of my best investments. Then we lost 80% in Beaune Greve both red and white. Out of the 22 hectares we had eight hectares that were impacted. We only produced one barrel of Volnay Champans. It’s dramatic. Thank God it stopped at Meursault Perrieres. Yields were 18 hectoliters per hectare — one of the smallest ever, but what we have is great. We made a drastic selection but compared to 2013, nature was able to recover after the hail. There were not a lot of berries, but the survivors were good. We only had to do a little chaptalization and we used between zero and 50% whole bunch. I am more and more a fan of whole bunches, but it depends on the vintage and the vineyard. The malic was pretty low at 2.1 grams per liter.”
