90/92

Neal Martin

Robert Parker/Wine Advocate

The 2013 Bonnes-Mares Grand Cru has a refined bouquet that is very well behaved for a Bonnes-Mares. It unfolds with blackberry, briary and light orange blossom scents. The palate is medium-bodied with crisp tannins. It feels a little angular at the moment and it needs to gain more substance toward the finish. Perhaps this will go through a gawky stage in its youth? Like last year, I sectioned off two morning sessions to taste through the complete range of Louis Jadot’s Côte d’Or wines. That’s over 100 wines and so I prefer to not rush, spend my time diligently tasting and comparing each one in the presence of winemaker Frédéric Barnier and then on the second morning accompanied by proprietor Pierre-Henry Gagey, fresh from a ten-day fasting in Germany and positively bounding with positivity. With such a plethora of vineyards under their wing, both owned and rented, both gentlemen have a birds-eye view of how Burgundy performed in the vintage. “There are two vintages: people who picked before and picked after that weekend when 50mm of rain changed the quality. We had to sort the grapes carefully. My fear was to have vegetal notes that you can sometimes have in late vintages, but during the fermentation we could see nice colors, no aggression and no vegetal notes, which you could never have predicted when you saw the weather first-hand during 2013. In Burgundy, we do not need fantastic weather to reach full maturity, it is more important to reach phenolic maturity. The weather in 2012 was nice during harvest, but that was not the case in 2013. Around 90% of the white and reds had to be chaptalized. Some of the whites were picked at 12.2%, but that was the top maturity we had in 2013. The acidity was mainly malic acidity and it was important to keep some of this and I did not want the feeling of a low acidity of wine, so in some crus we decided to stop the malolactic early.” It is difficult to summarize the quality of Jadot’s wines when they are so numerous. Certainly, as I remarked in last year’s report, I feel that Frédéric Barnier has adroitly stepped into the large charismatic shoes of his predecessor Jacques Lardière, and while not every label is a home run, the general quality is of admirable standard given the size and logistical complexity of their operation. In some ways, you can view Louis Jadot as a barometer of how Burgundy performed as a whole, excelling in areas such as Gevrey-Chambertin, while others such as Nuits Saint Georges were more variable. That is to be expected in a challenging season such as 2013. Certainly there are some outstanding wines that, as I have mentioned countless times, stand shoulder to shoulder with more bijou domaines that command much higher prices. However, compare them blind, and it is clear that the quality here can often match and occasionally surpass them.