2011 Macon La Roche Vineuse

The 2011 Macon-La Roche Vineuse comes from young vines and is mostly fermented in tank. It has a fragrant bouquet of dewy green apple and pear. The palate is fresh on the entry with pleasant green apples on the mid-palate, but it is just missing a little delineation on the finish. Drink now-2015. It was in 1987 that the Gaillard family sold their estate Domaine du Vieux St-Sorlin after 337 years of continuous proprietorship, to Charolais-born Olivier and Corinne Merlin. The Gaillards are little known today, but they were one of the first in the region to bottle their own wine instead of selling to co-operatives. By the time the keys were handed over to Olivier, the estate was run down, the tanks old and decrepit and the machinery long past its warranties. The vineyard was also in a state of disrepair, old vines planted in the 1920s and after the war having not been replaced over the years. It is for that reason that Olivier had to start with one cuvee, a “Vieille Vignes” since that was all he really had. Over the years, Olivier Merlin has become one of Macon’s success stories, the vineyards continuing to expand not only in Macon but into Moulin-a-Vent (where he makes the stunning “La Rochelle”) and in small plots in Burgundy. Olivier’s tenets are easy to follow: no chemicals but a lot of ploughing in the vineyard, picking by hand (he is vehemently opposed to machine harvesting), a long gentle pressing of around 5 hours before transferring the juice directly to tank. He allows very little settling, just scraping away anything “not coming from grapes.” Fermentation is natural with recourse to commercial yeasts only to remedy a problem, and he prefers the juice to remain inactive for 3 to 5 days before the fermentation starts. He follows a prudent use of new wood; despises residual sugar and uses the lees rather than sulphur to protect the wine during maturation. Also, he only selects the best barrels before bottling the wine rather than putting his entire crop under cork. His wines are pure, natural expressions of Macon and Pouilly-Fuisse, with a particularly strong hand apropos the latter. Some older vintages also proved that they age extraordinarily well. We tasted through the 2011s that were picked a little later than other growers, since he felt that the grape maturation was taking quite a long time. Importer: Le Serbet (Becky Wasserman Selections), www.leserbet.com; Daniel Johannes/Jeroboam Wines, New York, NY; tel. (212) 625-2505