Alain Meunier said that he began harvesting 5 or 6 September. Over the summer, he had performed a green harvest. Resulting overall yields were about 40 hl/ha, which he described as “generous,” but that’s not surprising given the frost losses in 2016 and the tendency of vines to come back very vigorously the year following such a frost. There was a 2% bleeding of the vats (saigner) for all wines.
All wines that I tasted below were from destemmed grapes; there were some whole clusters in the Bourgogne, but I did not taste that wine, as it was being prepared for bottling or was already in bottle.
Now working with his children, Alain said that there was more maceration and less punching down (pigeage) than in the past, less new oak, and as a result, less use of SO2. The amount of new oak is 20% for village wines, 30% for 1er crus, and 50% for grands crus.
Malo-lactic fermentations took place at various times, some finishing in the January 2018, others finishing not long before I visited in November 2018. (Continue reading here.)