Marquis d’Angerville Volnay Premier Cru Champans 2018

“The 2018 Volnay Les Champans 1er Cru has an outgoing bouquet similar to the Taillepieds, albeit one with more intellectual weight and gravitas behind it. Black cherries, blueberry and light cassis aromas reveal crushed stone and undergrowth notes, all delivered with intensity and superb delineation. The palate is medium-bodied with slightly firmer, stockier tannins than the Taillepieds, darker fruit and grainier texture toward the persistent finish. I see this has having real long-term potential. Excellent. Drinking window: 2023-2050. 93-95 points

“It was a pretty uneventful and easy season,” a typically sanguine Guillaume d’Angerville told me, as we tasted his 2018s in the ground floor tasting room within his maison that lies within Clos des Ducs. “There was an early flowering around 20 May. There was no significant mildew pressure and the vines reacted better than expected during the dry conditions. They are getting accustomed to it. They didn’t seem to suffer. We started the harvest early on 1 September. You know, the eight most precocious years have all been since I took over the Domaine from my father in 2003. We finished the picking after around five days. The vinification was unusual as the sugar levels were high for the yeasts to work efficiently and so a couple of malos took place during the alcoholic fermentation, which was not healthy for the yeast. So getting the wine to complete dryness was the challenge. Everything is de-stemmed, though for Volnay Frémiets I use a single 80 hectoliter vat and we ended up with more volume than that. So we used an additional smaller vat and in this we used 50% whole bunch that will be included in the final blend.”

Neal Martin, Vinous (01/20)