Offering of 2012 Vintage Burgundies of Louis JADOT

For a vintage that produced so many utterly compelling red Burgundies, 2012 could easily have been a disaster. And it was a financial calamity for many estates on the Cote de Beaune, where crop levels were down anywhere from 30% to 80%—the third of four consecutive years with less fruit than normal. Winter frost damage, a long rainy spring, a poor flowering, and mildew and oidium lowered the potential size of the crop everywhere on the Cote d'Or, and a series of damaging summer hailstorms made life especially miserable for growers on the Cote de Beaune. The growing season witnessed nearly every affliction known to Burgundy except for rot, which was largely prevented by the small, well-aerated clusters, thick grape skins and north wind in the weeks leading up the harvest. Of course, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger: the tiny crop was also the key to the high quality and richness of the 2012s, imbuing the wines with outstanding natural concentration—i.e., a concentration that did not throw off the balance of the wines. The 2012s show a density of texture, usually without heaviness, that is extremely rare for Burgundy... Burgundy lovers who think of Jadot's red wines from the Cote d'Or as classically dry and backward in their youth may well be shocked by the 2012 vintage here. There's an extraordinary sweetness and mellowness to many of these wines that will give them great early appeal, even if they have the concentration and seamless tannins to support graceful evolution in bottle. According to winemaker Frederic Barnier, the wines typically finished with between 1.5 and 2.5 grams per liter of residual sugar, with some as high as 3.0. It wasn't that grape sugars were freakishly high; it was more a matter of the sheer density of material in 2012. "We had great thick skins and no juice," said Barnier. "We didn't have juice, we had jam." He added that the tannins were firm, even dry, at the beginning but that the malolactic fermentations rounded out the wines. Jadot picked 130 hectares of vines in just 11 days, beginning on September 18 with the chardonnay, as crop levels were extremely low and little sorting was needed. Potential alcohol levels were in the very healthy 12.5% to 13% range and no wines were chaptalized more than a half degree, according to Barnier. The pHs are slightly on the high side--between 3.45 and 3.6--but Barnier noted that the 2012s have slightly better acidity than the 2011s. As to where the vintage was at its best, Barnier noted that he was more impressed with the quality and density of the Cote de Beaune wines, where yields were especially low. The wines of Chambolle-Musigny and Vosne-Romanee, he added, need more time, in barrel and in bottle, and Gevrey-Chambertin fared particularly well, as there was less oidium pressure this far north. He noted that Jadot harvests earlier on the Cote de Nuits than most, in order to retain freshness. Some of the 2012s here are almost too much of a good thing, but there are many stunning examples in 2012. ‑ Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar Issue 172, January/February 2014

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