Domaine des Comtes Lafon Meursault Charmes 1999

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5 Reviews

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Winery:

Domaine des Comtes Lafon

Varietal:

Chardonnay

Region:

France > Burgundy > Côte d'Or > Côte de Beaune > Meursault

Type:

White Wine

Color:

Drink Dates:

Drink Now - 2018

UPC:

 

User Tags:  balance, fruit, rich, stone fruits, acidic, style, harvest, intense, caramel, (tree) fruit 

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What to Expect

While Burgundy is renowned as the home of Pinot Noir, it is also the source for the ubiquitous Chardonnay grape. In these gently rolling hills Chardonnay achieves some of its most profound expressions. Appellations such as Meursault, Montrachet, and Corton Charlemagne proudly take their place among the most sought-after in all the world of wine. With a richness and complexity few wines can match, Chardonnay from Burgundy adds classic hints of flinty and chalky soil with nuances tones of nuts, cinnamon, honey and butter to the rich, sometimes unctuous but rarely heavy, ripe orchard fruits that the grapes are capable of providing. White Burgundy can improve in the bottle for decades and is arguably the most age-worthy dry white wine in the world.

Winemakers Notes

The Weather
An early winter, with some snow as early as November, but few days with very low temperatures. The beginning of spring was rather cold and wet.

* A normal bud break, starting at the usual time - around April 10th.
* Heavy rainfalls in the spring encouraged attacks of mildew which were however kept well under control.
* A normal - between the 5th and 10th June - rather long-drawn-out flowering season which ended round June 20th.
* July was hot, with the normal average hours of sunshine and storms.
* August was sunny with low precipitation.
* The read more...beginning of September was similar to the end of August: hot and sunny, except around the 17th and the 19th, with a few outbreaks of rain.
* On the eve prior to the harvest, the grapes, white as well as red, were perfectly healthy.



The Harvest
We finally decided to begin harvesting on 15th September starting with the old white vines and the young Pinots. Maturity was perfect (between 13° and 13.5° for both whites and reds.). Each day we then harvested the whites and the reds in turn:

* The grapes remained in perfectly healthy condition until the end of the harvest.
* The young Chardonnay vines were heavily-cropped and required extra time to finish ripening fully.

The harvest ended on 24th September in Puligny Champgain.
Yields were important, around 40 hl/ha in red, and 50 to 60 hl/ha in white, except in Montrachet (35 hl/ha).

Vinification
Red wines 1999 was a year with no particular problems; the musts had a very good acidity-sugar balance, the berries had thick skins and the extraction of colour and tannins was easy.
We macerated for about 3 weeks, without forcing the extractions, trying to maintain temperatures below 32° C in order to bring the fruit and the elegance of the wines forward.

Very good extraction of colour, high acidities, with low levels of malic acid as a direct result of the perfect maturity of the grapes.

The tannins are there, well coated by an intensely fruity flavour and plenty of fat.

White wines The whites did not pose any problem: straightforward pressings; easy rackings; regular fermentations. The sugar-alcohol fermentations finished around Christmas, the malos getting under way slowly thereafter to finish in April. In 1999 - the wines being plump and ample enough - we preferred to favour elegance and aromatic purity with only occasional stirring of the lees.

he whites :
All the wines produced from old vines are classical examples of the appellation: they combine power with elegance and a beautiful lingering aftertaste.

Those made from young vines do not give so much interest, the yields being too high to turn them into wines that are representative of their appellation. These were all declassified in the village Meursault cuvée.

1999 is a really great vintage with very attractive wines that will keep very well nonetheless.    (hide)

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