Like his Meursault bottlings, from fruit for which his contracts date to 2001 and over whose growing he is exercising increasing control, Colin’s 2007 Puligny-Montrachet Folatieres smells of peach, high-toned distilled fruit esters, grapefruit, anise, vanilla, and wood smoke; comes to the palate intense but rather austere in its combination of fruit pit and citrus rind bitterness, chalk, iodine, and ash; and finishes with impressive if almost riotous diversity and intensity, underscored and extended by bitter citrus rind and implacable, adamant minerality. Will the austerity subside? This wine has enormous extract, energy, and potential, but one needs to revisit it in a couple of years.
Pierre-Yves Colin – who openly pledges allegiance to Riesling virtues – does more than just talk the talk of achieving ripe fruit at low levels of potential alcohol. Finished alcohols in his collection – after half a percent or so of chaptalization – range from a (for modern times almost astonishing) 11.75% up to 12.75%. “I really can’t say,” he confesses, “why so many growers were getting fruit of 12.5% or more potential alcohol already at the end of August,” ten days before Colin even began picking, but he can say he doubts their fruit tasted ripe then! Half of the acreage he accesses is in Saint-Aubin – naturally conducive to later ripening – and was not picked until past mid-September this year. Colin believes in minimal settling, by gravity, and retaining lots of lees, but not in actively working them; favors rapid pressing, and 350- (one-third new) over 225-liter barrels; and welcomes late and protracted malo-lactic conversions – although this vintage's malos were completed by the following June. He bottled his Saint-Aubin crus at just over a year; his other premier crus this past March; and the grands crus (of which I was unfortunately unable to taste the Chevalier-Montrachet) in May, sealing them all with wax, in the belief that this will provide extra protection against harmful oxygen ingress.
For myriad further details on this relatively new estate and its rapidly-growing family of wines – nearly half of which are from contract fruit – readers are urged to consult my report in issue 180, where – having up until then not seen a label – I inadvertently left-off the “-Morey” from the winery name
A Daniel Johnnes Selection imported by Michael Skurnik Wines, Syosset, NY, tel. (516) 677 9300;Atherton Wine Imports, Menlo Park, CA, tel. (650) 328-6639 and Bertin Henri Selections, 10900 N.W. 21st Street, Unit 180, Doral, Florida 33172 tel: (305) 392-6995
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