Tasted in Saint Aubin with Olivier Lamy, 22 November 2022.
Domaine Hubert Lamy
20 rue des Lavières
21190 St.Aubin
Tel: +33 3 80 21 32 55
http://www.domainehubertlamy.com
More reports for Domaine Hubert Lamy.
Domaine Hubert Lamy is another domaine that has chosen to show wines only after bottling, hence, they were absent from my reports last year – except for this special tasting.
Olivier 2 years ago on 2020:
A year with a bit of everything, sun, drought, frost. Later harvesting for good maturity – you could have harvested at 13° the analytics looked okay but to the taste, the skins and pips really weren’t ripe. Warm, low volume, ripe vintages like this, I use no new wood, fortunately, after the frost, I already cancelled most of my new barrel orders. It was certainly a vintage with more sun than the average of the last 10 years – you could say more luminous.
Olivier today on 2020:
“Dry, sunny and hotter than usual – 50% less water and 2° higher than average. I started my harvest on the 20th of August in Gravières – it’s one of the earliest vintages here. The problem is that when you have 25% more sun the 100-day cycle doesn’t really mean much, you don’t take 75 days. The weather impacted the reds more with their darker skins so we ended up with 12-30 hl/ha as there was so little juice but there was also lots of concentration – the whites had okay juice so had higher yields. 24 months elevage for all the wines – a small part was racked to tank. I’m currently mixing the elevage between wine globes, foudres and barrels. All the wines are bottled with DIAM, all markets. I’m still testing some screwcaps in half bottles but find the DIAM the best compromise for today.”
The wines…
A tasting that underlined the presence of Olivier in the very top echelon of white wine production in Burgundy. I would say, today, together with Sauzet and Lamy-Caillat. If Domaine Leflaive can continue the brilliance that they showed in 2020 I would think about adding them to this tiny list. But this is a discussion of Lamy, and what a result again. I often find the reds from here a little too ‘essence of fruit’ and liqueur-esque, making them less easily drinkable for my taste – patience is underlined here despite me rating the 20s so highly – but the whites! Whether St.Aubin or Santenay, Puligny or Chassagne – great wine after great wine. I asked how much his HD cuvées cost at the domaine today and he told me that they are not available separately – though he assumes prices in the market of over €1,500…
2020 Bourgogne Les Chataigniers
From hill above St.Aubin – vines that are too high for the Côte d’Or label.
Modest aromatic volume but these are sweet and inviting aromas. Mouth-filling, modestly layered, fine freshness and a growing intensity – nicely generous and finely mouthwatering – this is excellent and finely complex finishing.
2020 St.Aubin La Princée
10 different parcels of multiple exposures and vine ages.
Airier and more vertical. Direct, a little more incisive – more waves of juicy flavour. Here there’s a super floral component. Yes!
2020 Chassagne-Montrachet Le Concis du Champs
Young vines, only 17 years old and one of the earliest vineyards to ripen here – the last two are usually amongst the last harvested but this is one of the first.
More width and more apparent sucrosity. Mineral but with a little silken generosity – that’s really lovely right now – you sense extra concentration – floral and faintly herbed in the finish too – this is excellent – super wine.
2020 Puligny-Montrachet Les Tremblots
A blend of 40-year-old and 70-year-old fruit – more of the 40…
A fuller nose but here with the sucrosity of the last. Extra width and intensity – tension for sure – there’s less of the richness of the Chassagne and less of the overt minerality. But finishing with finesse and it’s slightly floral again – a little more austerity but perhaps the longest finishing at this stage.
Very young vines in a sort of continuation of the Clos de Tavannes. A mix of two vine-ages, one large part (actually 90%) only 10 years old. “Historically, in Santenay they planted what they could sell – so there was a lot of red – the white plantations were often for personal consumption but seemingly in soils were properly suited to white.”
A more floral width of aroma here – really a beauty. Such incisive freshness yet width of supple, fresh, energetic flavour. Really broad finishing – a great Santenay Blanc – bravo!
0.7 metres planting distance here – so 14,000/ha planting density. Vines are sited below the church.
An attractively vibrant width of florals and minerality. Ooh – direct, mineral but with a complexity of juicy citrus to largely balance any austerity – that’s a great sweeping mouthful of wine – a touch of chalky finishing texture too – bravo!
2020 St.Aubin 1er les Frionnes
80 and 10-year-old vines.
Not the same width of aroma but still a fine and partly floral invitation. Extra mineral with a hint of textural generosity but here’s a brilliant wine that you should wait a little for – 2-5 years and then enjoy – but what a great and broadly finishing flavour.
Not the ‘hd’ cuvée, but this is still planted at 14k/ha
A slightly more structural nose but with a little floral to relax the aromas. Fuller in the mouth – here is volume, mineral and citrus, again with a faint austerity but another potentially top wine. Finishing saline and chalky again.
2020 St.Aubin Clos de la Chatenière
South-facing and warm here. 60-year-old vines always with small grapes.
Rounder, yellow citrus, a little oaky reduction. Broad – a different intensity – really juicy, a subtle cushion and here more yellow citrus – this a ‘southern’ St.Aubin… Yes! Super length too! Simply excellent wine.
2020 St.Aubin 1er En Remilly
From two parcels.
Extra aromatic complexity – the blend of citrus, flowers and minerality – super. Super juicy, complex too – mineral and delicious. This is open and finely complex. Lovely wine.
Old vines that produce small berries, ‘more character.’
This is much more compact – a core of riper citrus and fresh florals. Beautiful in the mouth – faint austerity but also a fluidity of flavour complexity – mineral, and delightfully mouthwatering – faintly creamy finishing. Not fully open but obviously a great wine.
More open, broader at the base too – extra wide – wide-screen aromatics – so juicy, fine agrumes here – nothing exotic. Top again!
Red soil but vines virtually rooted on the mother rock, young vines. Some co-planted HD ‘so I see a small change each year’ says Olivier.
Open, orchard fruits and flowers – that’s a different and very attractive nose. A little gas but what complexity, what clarity and what a fabulously juicy finish – a cascade of flavour here. Bravo!
20k/ha planting density.
More open and floral. Beautiful purity – certainly a step above the non-HD version. Extra – wow – grand cru level! Mouth-filling, extra density (not just high!) clarity, so long, so sustained. A wine to stop you in your tracks…
This Coravined (the last was too) is aromatically tighter. Again extra volume in the mouth – a little more austere and structural than the Tremblots – I’d wait longer for this – it’s less flamboyant, less directly fabulous but it clearly has all the material that you could wish for. Very sneakily long in the finish and the last drops in the glass have an extra perfume. Great but have more patience.
This grand cru is now planted at high density – 24 thousand vines per hectare! 2013 was the first vintage labelled ‘HD’
A very different style of perfume; deeper, a little tighter in the higher notes. This is beautifully open and with wonderful clarity of flavour – I see more clarity of flavour than was once the case for this wine. I might prefer the HD Tremblots today but this is a fabulous wine if you can find it – the mineral length is so impressive…
Les Reds:
2020 Chassagne-Montrachet Clos de la Goujonne
From 65 year-old vines.
A fine and pure red fruit preserve/confiture nose. Really mouth filling – not quite 2mm of cushioning but some. A frame of tannin but no grain. Hyper impressive wine – wait 2-3 years for the density to become more accessible and better 10-15. Super stuff.
‘A nice genetic selection here’ about 20 years old.
Less fruit preserves more freshness. Big in the mouth – structural but not hard – I’d still be waiting for this one – fresh and saline finishing. Really vibrant energy in this finish – that’s potentially a great wine – but, certainly, also for keeping.
From 60-year-old vines on a steep slope.
Not the largest nose but this is airy and hyper-attractive. Extra scale again – mineral, structural, juicily great wine – even a little floral lift in the finish but wait 10 years!
A warm area that matures very fast – it’s steep, with hard limestone here. 55-year-old vines and starting with some high-density too.
An extra complexity of stems in this one. A big, wine, a complex wine. Some tannic drag to the texture but no grain. The finish is broad, perfumed and the most accessible part of this wine today. It will make a great Santenay but like the other reds will be much better in 10+ years…
And for the road:
Much more open – airy and complex – a finesse that the 20 is not yet capable of showing. In the mouth too – still mouth-filling showing the stems more than the nose and clearly still to wait for but much more accessible than the 20 – I’m a bigger fan of 19 in general so it’s no surprise that I like this more but will also be a great wine…
2014 Santenay 1er Clos des Gravières
Still reductive but it cleans up with air – working the glass. Still a frame of faint tannin, drier than the 19 and 20 though in content so similar. Faintly starting to show flashes of more mature components. This will be super but it’s still a 4-5 year wait. The drive and freshness still impress.
There is one response to “Hubert Lamy – 2020”
What does HD cuvee mean?
Lars, HD = ‘Haute Densité’ as Bill refers to in full in his notes above for teh Criots-Batard HD, St.Aubin 1er Derrière Chez Eduard HD & Puligny Les Tremblots HD.
Haute Densite refers to Olivier Lamy’s what was originally experimentation (going back quite some years), now a more wider practice, with vine planting densities to capture even more from the terroirs – as in significantly higher/greater planting densities than ‘the norm’. As you might have noted from Bill’s tasting notes Olivier makes ‘normal’ cuvees & HD fruit cuvees from the same terroirs with the HD wines commanding a significant premium & demand.
Olivier is, imho, a really top guy, great company, and superb vigneron.
Hi Lars,
And thanks to Mark for his description.
If you’d checked out the link in the first paragraph of this report, you would have had some explanation there too.
All my best
Bill