The style of each of Roulot Merusalt Lieux Dits

Dear White burg heads and Roulot fans in particular

we love his wines. picked earlier. less wood. little to no lees steering. Focus on linearity and purity instead of richness and volume. these qualities show vintage after vintage and in case of 2009 almost to a fault (tasted blind, i wouldn’t guess any of his 09s as 09 which i guess is a good and bad thing).

Anyways, i digress. i wanted to use this post to help each other gain better understanding of the style of each of his lieux dits. pls post your observations and understandings for all to benefit from.

Tesson: very typical meursault. nuts, weight, white honey (acacia), hint of orchard fruit and sweeter citrus fruit like lemon and meyer lemon. great mid palate.

Tillets: narvaux like. thin soil. linear, lithe, mineral, slaty. not fruit, weight or power driven. light mid palate but instead chiseled finish. lime citrus and zest.

meix chavaux: mineral. different type of mineral than tillets. more staining. more power. limestone like, where as tillets is more slate, gravel, rock powder like. great mid palate.

vireuils: a mix of tillets, meix chavaux and luchets? more balanced and contains elements of other sites.

luchets: fruit driven. least mineral, less tension, more forward. good depth. big big mid palate but less tension and less excitement on finish (albeit long)


note: my observations are based on tasting 04, 07, 08 and 09 vintage only. even then its based on 1 or 2 bottles.

I’m not a Roulot expert, however I did spend some time walking some of the vineyards in Meursault. In fact we had a bottle of both Roulot Luchets and Vireuils while standing in the vineyards. There was a significant difference between the two wines. If one walks the road (path) from Vireuils to Luchets, there is a striking difference in the soil between the two vineyards… the Vireuiles being higher on the slope and much more rock, And the Luchets lower, more clay and less rocky. As with other vineyards such as Perrieres vs Charmes, the higher rocky slopes produce the more mineral driven, linear wines, whereas the lower slope produces the more fruit driven, richer style IMO.

Thanks for your input roger. My understanding n own experience mirrors the example and description you gave.

Anyone else cares to share their 2cents?

I’ve had quite a few of most of these over the last 5 or 6 vintages, but generally not several different wines together.

I must confess, I really haven’t thought about them as a generalization to the vineyard differences, except to note the Perrieres is usually very fine/minerally in the typical greats of Perrieres style…and I usually love the Tessons as well.

Probably something I should think a bit more about rather than just glugging them down next time…


Hmm…

Where’s Holmes anyway when you need him…

had 02 luchets other night. very rich, fruity, big. not lafon big but biggest i have seen from Roulot. so far it does seem that one can somewhat generalize and conclude luchets is rounder, bigger, fruitier than many other holdings…

Jeremy? Alan? Sarah? others who haven’t chimed in. any thoughts?