93-95
Neal Martin - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
"The 2015 Charmes Chambertin Grand Cru is 100% whole cluster fruit with the same oak regime as the Clos Saint-Denis. It has a seductive and pure bouquet with perfumed red cherries, crushed strawberry, mandarin and cola scents, quite generous but with more to give in the future. The palate is medium-bodied with supple tannin and very well-judged acidity interwoven through the brambly red fruit, leather and cedar. It becomes more masculine and structured towards the finish, almost Mazis in style, with a long spicy aftertaste.
Virgile Lignier is a great winemaker, but he's a bit scatterbrained when it comes to remembering appointments. He double-booked our tasting in Morey-Saint-Denis, which we eventually got round by splitting into two halves. At least he has a warm fire to keep warm since it was minus 3°C outside. "When I started winemaking I was in a haste to start the harvest but now I take my time," he told me. "I started on 9 September and finished on 19 September, the first de-vatting around 3 weeks later. I prefer a long maceration with 1 to 3 punch-downs per tank over the whole cuvaison period with more pumping over, which is started very early. In my father's time it was done at the end. If you do that you lose some of the perfume. I do not do any punching down to prevent breaking the whole berries. Doing it this way the fermentation starts inside the berry and gives more aromas and complexity to the wine. We had to be prudent with extraction to obtain soft and elegant tannins. The wines are matured in around 30% new oak and 2-5 year old barrels in the in new cellar for 12 months and then racked into stainless steel. Most of the wines will be bottled in February." It was a strong set of wines from the domaine. His Morey-Saint-Denis premier crus form the heart of his portfolio and provide some of his best wines, although I loved his Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru "Cuvée Jules" and his superb Clos de la Roche. Although he picked later than other growers, he has imbued his wines with superb freshness to counterbalance the sucrosity, often with sorbet-fresh blood orange notes (a leitmotif of the vintage) on finishes. Lignier-Michelot is a domaine you should seek out. Next time I am going to make sure the day before that Virgile hasn't forgotten I'm coming."
