Tasted with Olivier Merlin, 12 November 2023.

Domaine Merlin
106 Chemin du Lavoir
71960 La Roche-Vineuse
Tel: +33 3 85 36 62 09
merlin-vins.com
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Oliver:
“For 2022 there’s not a lot bottled yet but here are the first three, the last of which, the Pouilly-Fuissé, was done last week – it will be March before we’ve done. It’s hard to make a great comparison between 22 and 23 as the 23s have a lot of elevage to do yet – I’m not sure that they will be great long-keeping vintages. I harvested early in 23 with a low acidity – 22 I was also exceptionally early also with a bit lower acidity – similar in style. It’s big quantity in 23 though – unlike 22 as we have a lot vines on the rock so we had lots of grapes but not a lot of juice – we had less juice in 22 than we had in 2003! We needed 150kg of grapes to make 100-litres of juice – I’ve never seen that before! Fortunately in the round it’s an okay vintage for us but yes there was plenty in 2023 – when the Côte d’Or had 2-3 mm of rain we had more like 15 in 2023… Château des Quarts is planted all on the rock – we had a low volume vintage there!”

The wines…

Just a small window into the domaine’s 2022s – but they were delicious and attractively strict on today’s showing.

All wines are cork-sealed:

2022 Mâcon-Roche-Vineuse
Multiple parcels assembled for this.
Not a large nose but it’s open, fresh and appealing. Hmm, volume and successive waves of energetic flavour – a tiny structural strictness today but that’s good – long and sweet.

2022 St.Véran
Bottled just before the harvest. From Prissé – a large part – and the rest from Davaye – only foudre for this plus about 10% new wood.
Here’s an extra width of cool fruit energy – a faint zesty wrap of bitters too – yum again!

2022 Pouilly-Fuissé
Bottled in the last 7 days. ‘Lots of sectors in this ‘assembly’ half from Vergisson, later ripening plus those in Fuissé that are a bit less late ripening – in Chaintre with a lot of limestone we always start here and it’s only old vines for this cuvée.’
Plenty of colour but a nose of attractive freshness. Hmm – really large scale – but with good silky texture – again a slight strictness to this structure but a young strictness – give this a bit of time – 3 years-plus. It will be super!