Bourgogne Passetoutgrain l'Exception 2017

An equal blend of Pinot Noir and Gamay, the 2017 Bourgogne Passetoutgrain has a simple but satisfying bouquet of dark cherries and crushed strawberries. The palate is well balanced. Here the Pinot Noir is more expressive than the Gamay, finally reverting to something almost Fleurie-like on the blueberry finish. Delicious. Domaine Michel Lafarge, alongside Marquis d’Angerville, has long been the leading Volnay grower. In recent years under Frédéric Lafarge, I feel that the wines have stepped up another gear. Having tasted their wines back to the 1930s, in my opinion they have never made better wines than in this very decade. It was a pleasure to meet the next generation of the very family-driven domaine. Frédéric Lafarge’s daughter Clothilde took me through the wines, and her father, tied up with the bottling line, joined us halfway through. “We were saved from the frost this year by the burning of bales of hay,” Frédéric Lafarge told me down in the small cellar that houses his top cuvées, the walls covered in thick black mould. “It was warm and dry during the summer and there was very good flowering, very rapid. The harvest commenced on September 1 in Pommard Les Pezerolles and finished on September 5. I just waited to pick a little longer to achieve phenolic maturity. The sanitary conditions were perfect and so we did not need to sort. There was no chaptalisation in 2017; after all, it is a vintage of sun and warmth. I asked my father if it compares to other vintages and he mentioned 1964 and 1947. But there is good freshness and the terroir is very present.” After a raft of sensational wines in the last three years, the 2017s follow in less concentrated style, yet they remain noble and complex. As Frédéric Lafarge stated, they reflect their terroirs. Naturally, the heart of the range lies within the Volnay appellation, and let’s not beat about the bush: the Clos du Château des Ducs is a candidate for best Côte de Beaune. It is a tailored wine, each and every stem plucked by hand over 30 hours, seamless in terms of tannins and armed with stunning depth and precision. This Volnay lit up the dark cellar. The Clos des Chênes is also a brilliant wine, if perhaps without quite the same penetration, and don’t overlook the domaine’s entry-level wines either. If your request for Volnay Premier Cru seems to have got lost in the post, then stock up on a few bottles of delicious Bourgogne Passetoutgrain, a 50/50 blend of Pinot Noir and Gamay that is 750ml of fun.

Score: 87 - 89

Neal Martin, Vinous.com 01 October 2018