(Originally published October 2017)
Young Pierrick Bouley has been working with his father Pascal in the past years and gradually taking over the estate. Beginning with the 2016 vintage, new foreign customers will see the wines under the label "Pierrick Bouley,” French customers will continue to see the estate’s wines under the "Réyane et Pascal Bouley" label, and existing foreign customers will be able to choose whether they want to switch to the new name. The négociant wine(s) (see below) will be under the "Pierrick Bouley” label, regardless of where sold.
Pierrick said that 2016 was about like 2012 (one of the years of severe hail damage in Volnay) in quantity. As for style, he said that the wines were more typically Burgundian than 2015, characterized by good freshness. The wines were racked a month ago and presented in drawn-off barrel samples.
Harvesting here began on 20 September and finished on the 27th. There was very little triage. All bunches were destemmed. There was no chaptalization other than 1 kg of sugar added to the Bourgogne. Nor was there any acidification. Four wines have not received any SO2 up to now. There was less pigeage (punching down) than previously, now only two times in three weeks.
Malolactic fermentations took place in November and December. Pierrick said that he was thinking of bottling the wines at the end of the year because they taste so good now.
As with most estates that I’ve visited so far, there is an appellation that was not made in 2016. Here, it was Beaune. For the appellations that were made, you’ll see pitifully low yields for most of them. Keep reading until the end, though, for fortunately it is the last three wines that turned out commercial yields. The silver lining in this year of disastrous yields is that the three best vineyards were the ones that did not suffer from the freeze and so produced decent quantities of wine (indeed, the Champans and Clos des Chênes were abundant). (Continue reading here.)