2017 Domaine Ponsot, Clos de Vougeot 750ml

WA92-94

From one parcel in the lieu-dit Petit Maupertuis and another located below the Château de Latour, the 2017 Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru offers up a brooding bouquet of smoky berries, incense, dark chocolate and rich soil tones. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, ample and layered with a fleshy core of fruit, rich structuring tannins and a quintessentially blocky profile that's built for the long haul. Abel notes that after the 2016 frosts, the vineyard team made special efforts to control yields in the Clos Vougeot. The 2017 vintage is Domaine Ponsot's first since the departure of Laurent Ponsot, so I'm delighted to report that it's not merely a resounding success for the new team, but that Ponsot has produced some of the wines of the vintage. What has changed? The new team has made a few small refinements in technique. Fixed must lines, for example, are no longer used to transport the grapes from destemmer to tank: instead, the berries fall into a sump that's emptied into the tanks by forklift—a technique both more delicate and more sanitary. White grapes are no longer crushed before pressing. But the Ponsot style—characterized by late harvesting, complete destemming and élevage without any new oak—is faithfully respected. As is often the case, the domaine was among the last to harvest in the Côte de Nuits, and that decision seems to have paid off in the form of wines that are among the most concentrated and intense of the vintage, and which show not the slightest.