Tasted high up in the Clos de Haute-Combe with Vincent Audras, 22 February 2023.

Vincent Audras
Clos de Haute-Combe
69840 Juliénas
Tel: +33 4 74 04 41 09
www.closdehautecombe.fr
More reports with Domaine Vincent Audras

Vincent on 2022:
“Lovely quality in 2022 but only 30 hl/ha – the heatwave brought a lot of dryness”

Vincent on 2021:
“2021 was hard: Two nights of frost – the first hit the bottom of the slopes then the second the top! But worse was the hail that started here – there was none in the village of Juliénas – and then it moved on to hit the 1ers of Pouilly-Fuissé. It was an average of 10 hl/ha for the domaine – so there are not many cuvées. The work in the cuverie was only complicated by the lower volumes than we are used to.”

The wines…

Lovely wines from Vincent in 2021 – but so little of them…

The first bottlings were done in the Autumn. A mix of cork and diam-style seals:

2021 Juliénas Clos de Haute Combe Tradition
The classic cuvée – the assembly of all the vine locations of the domaine
A dark fruit width – not a large nose but still an interesting one. Supple and silky – a faint, ultra-fine grain of tannin today. Chewy middle flavours and long finishing. That’s a lovely wine.

2021 Juliénas Noblis
From the Clos – with barrel elevage, none new
Slightly more forward aromas, rounder too. Cool, fluid, the tannin is different – no grain – differently constructed – the flavour of the barrel only showing towards the finishing flavours – long – there’s super concentration in Vincent’s wines this year.

2021 VdF Gamaret
Whole cluster, crushed a little to make some juice. The stems of gamaret are quite large so it’s often destemmed – the grapes are quite big too. Cool fermented.
Here’s a nice width of aroma – it could easily be gamay. Fine pure – direct, cool – this is lovely, airy but not lacking intensity – delicious and easy to confuse with gamay!

For the road?