Domaine Georges Glantenay Volnay 1er Cru Les Santenots 2018  £75.00

DOMAINE GLANTENAY VOLNAY 1ER CRU LES SANTENOTS 2018

Guillaume Glantenay is the sixth generation of his family to run this Domaine, which he took over from his father in 2013. His father still works the estate’s eight hectares of vineyard, four of which are in Volnay, while Guillaume runs the new cuverie. For those who remember the wines from his father’s time, Guillaume has brought a greater elegance to the wines, and lovely purity of fruit. He uses about 15-20% whole bunch to lift the perfumes and low toast oak to support rather than mask these aromas.

The vineyard is located in the commune of Meursault, on the boundary of the Volnay and Meursault appellations. Soils here are a mixture of clay and limestone with chalky marl subsoils. The vines are Guyot trained and are an average age of 60 years old. The crops are tended to by hand and are consistently monitored during the year in order to keep the number of treatments required to a minimum.

2018 began with a warm spring and budburst in early April. The entire vintage continued ahead of schedule, with flowering in mid-June followed by a rapid fruit set. Ripening continued at a good pace, with alternating warm temperatures and rainfall during August. Winemakers across Burgundy were very enthusiastic about the 2018 crop, with the fruit in peak health and the region back to producing good quantities of quality fruit, in comparison to the difficult harvests of recent years.

The fruit was hand-picked and thoroughly sorted, first in the vineyard and again in the winery. The grapes were cold-soaked in stainless-steel vats before indigenous yeasts start fermentation. The maceration and fermentation lasted a total of one month with daily punch-downs and pump-overs. The wine is then aged on fine lees in French oak barrels, 30% of which is new, for 15 months. It is bottled without fining or filtering.

This Premier Cru has aromas of gooseberry, cherry and violets evolving with time towards cooked fruit and more spicy notes. It has velvety tannins on the palate and an elegant complexity to its long finish.