2012 Ballot-Millot Meursault 1er Cru 'Genevrières'

Today, the estate is comprised of 10 hectares of vineyards, seven of which are in Meursault proper. The relative vine age is old: Perrières (40+ years), Genevrières (70+ years), Narvaux (45-60 year), etc. Harvest is all done by hand, and fermentations take place with indigenous yeasts. Otherwise, everything in the cellar is done to encourage finesse and delineation over sheer power. The white wines see only 10-20% new oak (max 25%for sone top wines) and are raised without battonage. They are aged 12 months in barrel, and then racked to tank for an additional six months of refinement as is now standard procedure at more and more of the top estates in Côte d’Or. For the reds, given the slightly more rustic line-up of appellations, the wines are all 100% de-stemmed with gentle extractions and relatively short cuvaisons. Here too, new wood use is judicious, with a max of 25-30% new.

The resulting wines tend toward the so-called “Roulot-school” of Meursault, more tensile and racy, as opposed to the fatter, honeyed and nutty style of wines that dominated the landscape 20-30 years ago. There is excellent terroir-delineation, which is exciting given the exceptional range of 1er Crus and lieux-dits that Ballot has in his arsenal. On the red side, it is nice to discover slightly more graceful expressions of these often more “four square” appellations, without compromising the expression of the underlying sites.