2012 Volnay Santenots

Dark red and black fruit, cloves and new leather explode from the glass in the 2012 Volnay Santenots. This is another Côte de Beaune red that shows the massive, explosive personality of a year in which tiny berries with little juice yielded big, full-bodied wines. The 2012 is going to require considerable patience, but it is likely to remain intensely tannic.

The 2012 Volnay 1er Cru Santenots has fleshy red berry fruit mixed with a touch of vanilla on the nose, cassis emerging with time. The palate is medium-bodied with quite tough tannins that do not sit comfortably with the fruit profile at the moment. This needs to succour more focus and harmony by the time of bottling. One statement nonchalantly uttered by head winemaker Frederic Barnier not only summed up the 2012 vintage, but the plight of Burgundy in recent years. “We have lost around one and a half crops out of the last four.” Imagine losing your equivalent income? For a significant negociant such as Louis Jadot, one that under outgoing(ish) winemaker Jacques Lardiere and his successor, have constantly striven for quality, that dearth of fruit has a major impact. The dramatic decrease in crop means that more people are “fighting” for top quality contracted fruit. The rise in land prices has exacerbated the problem as few can afford to buy vineyards and therefore resort to building small negociant businesses and join the queue. Now, small operations that just require one flagship barrel of grand cru might just be able to afford to pay over the odds. However, a merchant such as Jadot simply cannot afford to do that when they need dozens of barrels to satisfy worldwide demand. So how do they do it? “Relationships,” answers Frederic, “It all comes down to relationships with our contracted growers.” For evidence of that, just flick down to my review of their Bienvenue-Batard-Montrachet that came a whisker away from never being made. So with all the sturm und drang, how are Louis Jadot faring? Suffice to say that Frederic seems to have slipped into Jacques Lardiere’s impossible-to-fill shoes by simply slipping into his own. There was a confidence about him when I conducted two morning sessions with him, though he never crosses the line into braggadocio. The first tasting focused on a complete horizontal of the white. “The (white) 2012s were very rich,” he remarked. “Some of the village crus were overwhelmed and they were too fat and heavy. So in order to maintain freshness we blocked the malo-lactic through sulfur addition.” Frederic goes into more detail of the vintage in the accompanying video, but the main point is that the skins were thick and the berries yielded very little juice. This meant that he had to exact a very prudent vinification in order to eke out the free-run juice without leeching hard, bitter, perhaps astringent elements. He appears to have done exactly that. While I would not say that it was an unmitigated success, after all when you annually produce 100 crus there are bound to be some that don’t quite make the grade, Louis Jadot’s 2012s continue a fine run of form that disprove the theory that large-scale merchants cannot produce wine equal if not better than bijou growers. And that comes from a lot of sweat and tears. Frederic rued that he had not seen his wife or children over the previous four weeks during the harvest! But these prenatal wines appear to have made that temporary estrangement worthwhile. These samples were all taken from barrel and prepared by Frederic Barnier on the same morning of my arrival, with as much effort to reflect the final blend as possible. Note that for the village crus, samples did not include deselected premier crus barrels that will obviously ameliorate those wines. Importer: Kobrand Corp., Purchase, NY; tel. (914) 253-7756 and through Hatch Mansfield in UK.

This is intensely earthy with menthol and cassis aromas adding breadth to the mocha-inflected nose. The mid-palate of the concentrated and impressively intense medium weight flavors is pure velvet before terminating in a palate coating and mineral-driven finish that is borderline rustic. This is somewhat similar to the Champs Fulliot in that the balance is not bad but neither is it perfect. This serious effort will require time to resolve the tannins though I underscore that because the balance is not perfect this might be best drunk young for the fruit and I have adjusted my predicated range accordingly. Tasted: Apr 15, 2014. Drink: 2018+