2012 Chapoutier Selection Parcellaires en primeur

12 Jun 2013

2012 Chapoutier Selection Parcellaires

Rich and structured wines

As ever Michel has made a set of wines that exactly reflect his terroirs in the context of the vintage. And what a set of vintage conditions they were. And what a set of wines. It started with a very dry winter with a lot of vine stress in March from lack of water. Then it rained for nearly 20 days in April. June was also cold and disrupted during flowering, producing less fruit and fewer seeds in each berry, making for less bitter wines. Overall the average temperatures in 2012 were the same as 2000, but last year the nights were cooler.

But the real challenge of 2012 was in not hurrying harvesting. The team wanted to do four detailed passes but Michel decreed two as, he says, a little disparity in ripeness is a good thing for complexity and ageing in a wine. And they never harvest on lab data, rather preferring the analysis of tasting the fruit and - especially - the seed.

Also, as ever, the wines aren't blends of grape varieties, there being no need to blend for quality as we see in Burgundy. Michel is fonder of biodiversity and bacteria than of blending. Bacteria make the crucial third soil, after the geological soil that most vines never reach and what he calls the pedalogical soil - the topsoil. The bacteria are the vector for chelating minerals in the soil and getting them into the vine. And what are they like? See individual wines for my tasting notes, but above all they are fruity - more so than the 2011s. They are mineral and complex - like the 2010s - and they are fresh. Quite simply, they are delicious, and while the southern Rhones will drink beautifully after a couple of years' bottle age, the northerners will repay a little longer. /CW