2017 Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Les Belles Filles Pernand-Vergelesses
There’s always something special about a PYCM Blanc even from its more modest vineyards. Aside from the uniformly top flight wine making, there’s a house signature I can’t resist. It’s the study in contrasts that we often look for in a great wine it invariably achieves, like the old saw “an iron fist in a velvet glove”. This is racy yet rich, tight but expressive, creamy and citric, seriously layered and long.
Easily worth 2 or 3 times what I paid for this. Unfortunately I was pretty late to the PYCM party, but the love and hype for this producer is without a doubt fully warranted.
I feel like newer vintages of pycm haven’t been as good for whatever reason, I’ve been underwhelmed by the last two vintages at La Paulee. 11-17 pycm is killer tho.
I think the youngest PYCM I’ve had was a 2018, not as good as any of the 2017s I’ve had (makes sense given how good 2017 was for white burgs), but still excellent.
I’ve read they dialed back quite a bit on their reductive signature? I only had recent ones and they were not nearly as reductive as I’ve expected based on reputation. They were very well made wines, but I would guess many white burg drinkers are looking for that flinty reductive note in there. I’m not sure if you’re one of them or if the change started since 2018, though.
My experience is different. I feel that the wines have gone from strength to strength and to my palate the wines are more refined than they were a decade ago. Some recent 20 and 21 whites were killer for their level.
We spent 2 hours with P-Y on 11/5 tasting thru his range of 24s in barrel. He’s an obsessive winemaker on top of his game who is building white burgundy that will age effortlessly, in addition to being a gracious host. The wines all go through a very long and gentle press (he has 7 presses to accommodate all the different cuvées), in order to extract the “right lees” to properly strengthen the wines for the long haul. He uses 350 liter barrels and only 20-30% new to minimize oak influence, and does no lees stirring or racking, and is now keeping the wines in barrel for 2 years. He mentioned that with his cold cellar he’s been dialing back the free sulphur and so the younger wines won’t have that element which people sometimes confuse with reduction.
Out of barrel the 24s were magnificent and for my palate show a perfect amount of flinty and chalky dry extract. He’s got some exciting new Meursault and PM cuvées for 24, via a long term metayage contract.
FWIW, I also think ~11-17 is killer and don’t like what I had from 18 and 19 as much. I think they’re way less reductive so if that’s your thing, you may like them less. I haven’t had 20-24.
I’ve drunk through my 11’-16’s. God, the 14’s were great across the range, but enjoyed all the vintages. I’ve still got '17-20, so we’ll see. (I like the 10 year wait; its seems right to me.) I worry less about reduction, or is it sulfur?, disappearing. Availability and pricing seem to be the real challenges going forward, though I’m generally not buying any wine any more anyway. @Neal.Mollen, I used to feel the same way about white burg, but as I aged out I came round to them. Some of my most memorable burg experiences of late have been with whites.
Larry, thanks for the real time update. Curious if you tasted the 2023’s, either this trip or previously? If yes, any thoughts and comparisons to the 2024’s?
Has anyone had any premox issues with PYCM? I have not heard of any, just checking to make sure I can keep aging my stash comfortably. Mine only go back to 2016 as of now.
I have always been meaning to ask that too. I see their reds on store shelves all the time, it doesn’t seem like they are especially expensive or getting picked up quickly.
I have never heard a single person tell me they have had the reds, except one store clerk who said they were good.
I know many burgundy producers are known more for their whites or the reds, but is there any producer with that wide of a split between buzz and demand?
Maybe things have changed, but when I was in distribution some customers would complain when they were allocated Coche-Dury reds instead of whites. The same happened with Roulot.
Well, you’re probably right, but jazz fans of all ages appreciate Monk. When we were kids, we used to get a kick out of looking him up in the Manhattan phone book: Theolonious S. Monk. Cool that he was listed.
We didn’t taste the PYCM 23s, but we did at other domaines (Bachelet-Monnot, Pernot, Dujac and Moreau). It appears to be an excellent vintage, albeit a solar vintage with high yields, I liked the whites more than the reds, and would compare the young white wines to vintages like 2015, 2016 and 2020.
