2013 Chassagne Montrachet Les Caillerets

Creamy green-apple aroma plus an attractive stoniness. Almost a touch aggressive on the palate – initial fruit and then high acidity. A bit hard on the finish. (JH)

The 2013 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru les Caillerets has a captivating chalky bouquet that has one of the best defined aromatics in 2013: this has a razor-sharp focus. The palate has the depth and roundness of the Morgeot, but there is slightly mineralité toward the finish that offers grapefruit, quince and a healthy dash of spice. There’s also that lovely saline ending to finish what is an outstanding Chassagne. Excellent. ||Before descending into the cellar, Jean-Marc Blain always likes a good old chinwag about the vintage. How civilized. No racing for the pipette here. He likes to set the scene, inquire about my other visits, relate his own perspective on the growing season in question. It also gives me a chance to admire some wonderful old black and white photographs of his grandparents and great-grandparent at harvest time (his wife Claudine is the granddaughter of Edmond Delagrange.) Jean-Marc carries on the tradition, though he is expanding their holdings with a recent acquisition of vines not in the Chassagne but in Beaujolais, the Côte de Brouilly to be exact. I look forward to tasting those later next year. He explained how his old vines were affected by the long flowering more severely than the younger vines, but as some compensation those older vines produced small concentrated berries. He picked from September 28 until October 4 and stressed the importance of selecting the ripe fruit in the vineyard (Jean-Marc does not use a sorting table). When I asked whether he chaptalized he replied that he always does a little, even in 2009. All his white 2013s had been bottled, since he wanted to conserve the tartaric acidity while the reds were still in barrel. His was a fine set of wines. There is nothing flamboyant or extraordinary here, conservative in a positive rather than pejorative sense. They usually carry a little less weight than those of Fontaine-Gagnard next door – these are wines that do exactly what you want them to. I would head straight for Jean-Marc’s fantastic Chassagne Caillerets: a vineyard that excelled in 2013, or if you can afford it either the Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet or the “big daddy," the Montrachet itself, although quantities are miniscule. The reds put in a good performance, but it is really with the whites where the most excitement lies. eRobertParker.com.December, 2014