2016 Meursault Charmes
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Tasting notes
(35 hectoliters per hectare produced, with some loss of fruit to the frost): Bright medium yellow. Aromas of peach, smoky oak, hazelnut and earth. Offers more carry-through of fruit onto the palate than the village wines, with stone fruit flavors nicely buffering the wine's salty minerality. Good depth and stuffing here, not to mention inner-mouth tension and sappiness. This rather refined 2016 finishes with excellent length and grip. (Incidentally, Latour produced just two barrels apiece of Meursault Bouchères and Poruzots in 2016.)
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Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
More reviews and scores
(13.8% natural alcohol): Healthy light yellow. Musky stone and citrus fruit aromas are complemented by vanilla and hazelnut. Distinctly riper and sweeter than the Narvaux, with classic Meursault fullness to its flavors of stone fruits and spices. Nothing off-vintage about this dense, oily, voluminous wine, whose impression of sucrosité (it's actually carrying close to 2.5 grams per liter of residual sugar) is nicely leavened by incisive acidity (4.8 grams per liter). Latour told me that when the sugars got down to about 2.5 grams in 2016, he chilled his cellar because he didn't want higher alcohol "to burn the wines." He felt that without a bit of residual sweetness, the wines would be too dry for their levels of alcohol.