Meursault ’Clos du Cromin’ - Chardonnay (18) G.Boulanger

The 2018 Meursault Clos du Cromin comes from the domaine’s largest holding, at 1.42 hectares, and has been produced by the domaine since the 1970s. It has an excellent, quite intense bouquet of pineapple, tangerine and nectarine aromas. The palate has a lightly spiced, ginger-tinged entry with good weight, perhaps a little short toward the finish, but I like the salinity here. Not long-term, but it will give pleasure over several years. 89-91/100 Neal Martin on October 2019

I met with Guillaume Lavollée, head winemaker of the domaine to taste the wines in the family home opposite the Château de Citeaux in Meursault. The wines are made in a winemaking and storage facility just outside of Beaune that was built in 1994. The domaine started in 1974 by Guillaume Lavollée's wife's great grandparents. "They were pharmacists and none of the children wanted to take over, so they diversified into wine. They first bought in Mercurey and then in 1975 expanded in the Côte de Beaune. Their children invested in the domaine and augmented the holdings even more which is why it is spread over so many different appellations. Today the domaine is 22 hectares equally split between whites and reds. We have been certified organic since 2018, although the conversion began ten years earlier. Until 2008 most of the production was sold to négociants. We had some difficult years with hail, which psychologically made us prudent in converting to organic, we also needed money and time. My team thought that this way of farming was more work for sure. I wanted workers to be 100% convinced before applying to organic viticulture. We have more Premier and Grand Crus than Village wines. I started on the marketing side and then studied at the Lycée Viticole. We make traditional wine: hand picked and sorted, natural fermentation for white and red, very light extraction with some whole cluster (although not in 2018) as a kind of "pepper". My preference is on the freshness side so I prefer it de-stemmed. We mostly do pump-overs every other day with almost no punching down, more like an infusion, to avoid hardness of tannins. We age for 12 months in barrel with around 10 to 15% new oak and then 6 months in stainless steel, then bottle in the spring. We own so many different terroirs, some very different from each other, so my idea is to make everything the same way, whether it is Village or Grand Cru. I feel that 2010 was the year that the reds changed to the style I want, but it was not until 2013 that the market began to notice. All the samples had been racked from barrel into tank a month ago. In 2018 we started the picking on 28 August until 11 September, stopping twice during that period. The average alcohol is around 13.5% with one or two closer to 14%. The whites are crushed before pressing for around three hours to extract as much as possible. There is no SO2 before alcoholic fermentation. Once the fermentation starts in tank we rack into barrel. There is no lees-stirring and after malo we add the first sulphur then age for 12 months, plus 6 months in tank. There is occasional fining but no filtration."