Bernard & Thierry Glantenay Volnay 2017

“As usual, the 2017 Volnay Village includes two small premier cru parcels that Glantenay doesn’t wish to vinify separately, and it’s shaping up very nicely, offering up a fragrant nose of sweet cherries and berries, violets and orange rind. On the palate, it’s medium-bodied, satiny and supple, with an ample core of sweet fruit and a fine-grained, elegantly chalky finish. 89-91 points

The disarmingly modest Thierry Glantenay is emerging as one of the Côte de Beaune’s most exciting producers of red wine. From his hillside winery overlooking the Marquis d’Angerville’s Clos des Ducs, Glantenay is producing a lovely range of elegant, pure and intense Volnays and Pommards that are increasingly consistent and stylistically assured. In the cuverie, he tells me, he is more and more content to let temperature and alcohol do the work of extraction for him, keeping pigéage and rémontage to a minimum; pressing is gentle; and élevage, without racking until the mise en bouteille, takes place in at most 30% new barrels. In the cellar, no matter which barrel you choose, the wines taste reliably wonderful: indeed, after my first tasting with Glantenay, some years ago, I was compelled to return a week later to verify that I hadn’t been imagining things, and that so serious a producer could really be so little known. That his wines sometimes take longer to bounce back after bottling than those of his peers, therefore, surprises me. Glantenay neither fines nor filters, but might the mobile bottling line he uses for the mise perhaps do a gentler job? In any case, the quality is not in doubt, and after the superb vintages of 2015 and 2016, 2017 is a worthy successor, in a lighter, more supple register, certainly, but with plenty of flavor and personality, and at last, available in normal quantities.”

William Kelley, Wine Advocate (01/19)