Pierre Morey left the domaine about 07 and, not coincidentally, premox has since afflicted this previously great source of (a bit overpriced) domaine. With great grand and premier cru vineyards, Leflaive has made reference point whites.
No more. Total crapshoot. Prices have doubled and tripled and premox is rampant.
Last night, Jerry Hey opened 2007 Chevalier. Shot. Sherried, dark, almost dead. 2004 was a touch better, but still not good. Far advanced, no vibrancy, no life. No good.
2015 Chartron Chevalier was far too young, lean and mean, just nascent and undeveloped. Needs a few years to flesh out.
2001 Anne Gros Clos Vougeot had a lovely Pinot nose, palate marred by a bit too much oak, good depth and balance, nice but not headspinning.
At least the company was great, food excellent at Michael’s on Naples.
Sadly yes. On the bright side I opened my very last Colin-Deleger, a 2003 Chassagne Chaumées, and it wasn’t
Moxed! Small victory but I no longer buy except for the occasional drink now wine.
And Buzz, I ain’t a golfer!
My first premoxed Leflaives were in 2002. Once, along with Coche, my only safe bet to avoid premox, now no more (and can’t afford Coche). Good discussion in “Post Premox” thread by Don Cornwell about Leflaive’s problems:
"My impression about Leflaive’s SO2 usage is the same as yours. One of the things that really impressed me when I looked at Leflaive’s wine-making process was that Pierre Morey monitored the SO2 levels throughout the wine-making process and made small additions of SO2 as needed throughout the process. That was a very unusual practice in burgundy at that time, where most wines saw no SO2 additions between the crush pad and bottling and almost no one else monitored SO2 levels on an ongoing basis. On the other hand, California winemakers would all tell you that what Leflaive did is pretty basic wine making. (That’s just part of the difference in what winemakers are taught in US versus Burgundy and we put a much greater emphasis on scientific measurement and having at least a basic understanding the underlying chemistry here. But since the Burgundians historically had a natural advantage in terms of generally higher total acidity levels and lower ph, they also, without knowing it, had naturally higher levels of molecular free SO2, which is ph-coupled and rises as ph falls. But global warming is changing that. The Burgundians, who saw average sugar levels rise and average total acidity levels fall over the last 15 years (according to the BIVB records), were frequently facing more California-like fruit and I don’t think they ever realized that they now had wines that really needed ongoing SO2 monitoring and adjustments if necessary. But I digress…)
I’m not sure what happened with Leflaive’s 2002s. It was the first vintage in Morey’s tenure where there was any level of premox. It was maybe 1 out of every 12 to 15 bottles, and it didn’t start showing up until the wines were about nine years old, but it definitely happened.
Then I think Leflaive got scared by what happened to them in the 2004 vintage, which experienced the most severe oidium problems for white burgundy in the modern era. Everyone dusted their vines and fruit with elemental sulfur every two weeks for several months. No one seems to have realized, until after the wines were well into the fermentation process, that a lot of sulfur was trapped within the bunches. The result was that everyone made wines reductively in 2004. For Leflaive, who apparently didn’t adjust their usual techniques, they ended up with super-reductive wines in 2004. A few of the Laflaive cuvees, particularly 2004 Clavoillon, ended up being permanently reductive and in some instances exhibiting mercaptans – in a nutshell, the wine was completely undrinkable. I also opened a couple of Batards that exhibited mercaptans as well. The 2004 Leflaive grand crus always struck me as very hard and somewhat harsh wines and there was no escaping the fact that they were quite reductive. I still have couple of bottles of the Chevalier left just for monitoring purposes.
I surmise that the 2004 vintage, along with Anne-Claude’s growing fixation on method bio-dynamie, caused Leflaive to lower their use of SO2 and, as you say, become less concerned about monitoring of the wines, topping up the casks, and adjusting SO2 throughout the wine-making process. The most recent figures I’ve seen on Leflaive’s free SO2 targets for bottling – at 25 to 28 ppm – are among the lowest in burgundy today. Obviously, something has substantially changed over time because Leflaive went from being one of the five best producers from a premox perspective from the 1995 to 2001 vintages to one of the ten worst producers from a premox perspective from the 2006 to 2009 vintages."
Yes, also had problems with '02 leflaive. Under Anne-Claude, it was like premox didn’t exist when the wines were obviously oxidizing extremely fast.
The domaine has started turning things around in the past couple of years. In my 2016 visit, greeted by sylvain the vineyard manager, it was made clear that the oxidation issue was their #1 priority on the wine making side. Just this past April we had a tasting with the new wine maker Pierre Vincent who came from vougeraie. They are trying lots of new things (pre-oxidizing the juice after pressing and other techniques). I have faith they will eventually iron things out. IMO they’re sitting on some of the best terroirs in puligny.
I don’t know what happened to a long post I wrote on the dinner with Alan last night and some oxidized Leflaives but here are my thoughts again. Two bottles bought on release, stored perfectly, and in pristine shape showed nothing of the magical quality that I associate with even moderately aged white burgundy from a great producer. The 07 was dark and had the tell tale sherry nose, while the 04 was darker than it should have been, it was still very advanced although drinkable, but barely. Tonight I had a bit of the 04 that was left sealed with a vacuvin when I got home last night. It seemed to have tightened up a bit but not much. I tasted the 05 and 06 recently and while the 06 was advanced and just drinkable, the 05 was brilliant, like a Leflaive Chevalier should be. No explanation to it with all these bottles. It is just unacceptable…
Good thing Alan brought a 15 Chartron and the good but oaky 01 Clos Vougeot.
At least the food and the company were great, almost making up for the Leflaives.
![[rofl.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7452fcd8e675af869f8da01174474a545b03944.gif "rofl"){kind=small}