2014 Domaine Michel Niellon Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Chaumées Clos de la Truffière- France, Burgundy, Côte de Beaune, Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru (3/15/2019)
This is an extraordinary wine. It is very young in many ways. The palate is big and shows a lot of structure. However, the nose is amazing. This is white burgundy to me! Beautiful
golden fruit. Mineral. Powerful yet elegant. It is hard to put it into words. These 2014 Niellon’s have a special element to them. That extra gear that you associate with the best white burgundies.
Extraordinary!
They have certainly taken them seriously. Michel Coutoux is paying careful attention to dissolved oxygen during the racking and bottling processes. He has been perplexed by why premox affected some of his father-in-law’s wines and not others and IIRC thinks it’s down at least in part to how the wines were bottled. He also had some malolactic stability issues with some of his own wines so also monitors completion of malo very carefully. I have not experienced premox with recent vintages and buy the wines myself for what that’s worth.
I haven’t had much newer Niellon, but as you say, William----if I remember peeking in at various Niellon notes over the last year or two, there doesn’t seem to be nearly as much of a problem any longer.
Don, sounds lovely, and echo there are no 2014 whites that I haven’t at least liked. How do you think the Chaumees vineyard itself stacks up in this vintage? I’m looking at (I think–have to check) a Vincent Girardin from that property from 2014.
They are quite rich, fleshy, broad-shouldered wines. It was also the last vintage of Bâtard before they ripped up the vines (it’s lying fallow right now). The Clos Saint-Jean was a particular success, as it was in 2017, and I thought the 2015 Maltroie was a bit on the ripe side. 2015 is a very good vintage for their reds, it’s also worth noting.
Mike. I haven’t had any others from Les Chaumees but I have heard that the Ramonet was very successful. I can’t imagine any from this terroir would be anything other than very good. I know that these vines of Niellon were supposedly planted in 1939 so it is a special plot. It is a small leased property that they do not own.
I find it a bit difficult to rank white Burgundy vintages in general, esp. in the period of 2008-2017. Pretty much all of them have been good vintages IMHO and I cannot think of any that I would really put confidently at the bottom. I agree that 2014 is clearly at the top, but for me with respect to the other vintages in this period I cannot find huge consistent differences in the vintages.