2013 Chassagne Montrachet Morgeot

The 2013 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Morgeot was showing quite a lot of reduction on the nose when I tasted it from tank. The palate is medium-bodied with good weight, although it does not quite seem to possess the same level of tension and mineralité as its fellow Chassagne premier crus at the moment.

Reduced nose hints at underripe pineapple and stony minerality. A juicy, nicely balanced midweight with a touch of sucrosite counterpointed by sound acidity. Bright but a bit youthfully unforthcoming today, and not yet showing its personality.

The 2013 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Morgeot was showing quite a lot of reduction on the nose when I tasted it from tank. The palate is medium-bodied with good weight, although it does not quite seem to possess the same level of tension and mineralité as its fellow Chassagne premier crus at the moment. ||Every year I try to visit growers whose wines I am familiar with but whose doorbell I have not rung. That’s a neverending list so I try to tick off a few each year. This time I visited Domaine Bruno Colin, part of the dynasty that seems to occupy the entirety of Chassagne and its environs. Bruno is actually the younger son of Michel Colin-Deleger, with whom he worked until 2003, when the domaine was divided between his brother Philippe and himself, Philippe opting to relocate outside Chassagne in a facility with Michel Niellon. His is quite a wide portfolio straddling white and red with a strong emphasis upon Chassagne as you would expect. The whites undergo minimal lees-stirring, a technique that he is not overly keen on, preferring to let them rest on their lees. His reds are destemmed and usually aged in around one-third new oak, bottled sans fining or filtration. |“I started the harvest on 1 October,” he told me, a date slightly later than others in Chassagne who commenced on September 28. “There was lots of pressure during the season but the berries stayed healthy. In 2013, the cuvaison was relatively short, between 10 and 15 days. The malolactics finished in February for the whites but for the reds it was later around April.”||After tasting just a handful of his 2012s, I was able to taste through the entire range of 2013s. I feel that some of the cuvees were compromised by the challenges of the growing season, with several lacking the desired complexity and substance befitting a premier cru. In particular, some of the Chassagne reds were missing flesh and felt rather skeletal, though they can be much better in a more benevolent growing season. But there are some exemplary whites here, especially in la Maltroie and les Vergers that are absolutely superb.| eRobertParker.com.December, 2014