Domaine Hubert Lamy, Precision Incorporated – 2016 Burgundy Offer

Lamy now farms four small parcels, planted in 1990 and 2008, on the white limestone of Les Chataigners. Tucked up at the far end of the village, the sheltered site is Lamy’s highest and coolest vineyard. This fruit is whole bunch pressed and naturally fermented before being raised in ten-year-old barrels. It has excellent intensity for the level. A juicy, mineral crunchy white Burg that will certainly benefit from a year or two to settle and flesh out. Huge electricity but Meadows is right, if you want fat and texture, this is not for you.

This is magic. Representing almost a quarter of Lamy’s production, La Princée is a blend of ten small village parcels totalling just under three hectares. One-third of these vines are now over 60 years old, with the remainder planted in 1985 and 2000. All the parcels are sited in the cooler, east-facing Saint-Aubin combe (or valley), on chalky, mineral soils. It is therefore no surprise that this is a racy, crunchy white Burgundy of enormous, limestone-rich personality and energy. For lovers of mineral white Burgundies, this will offer more pleasure than many wines at twice the price.

Lamy has 2.4-hectares in this 1er Cru with the vines planted in 1935, 1960 and 1985. Les Frionnes is a southeast-facing site with old, decomposed limestone/clay soils and a plethora of small rocks in the top soil. The vines here are adjacent to the Derrière chez Edouard, but this is a slightly warmer site and is picked earlier. Exposed to the south, but on firm mineral soil, Frionnes gives both pulpy fruit and vibrant, saline freshness. The 2016 is wonderful.

Lamy has 0.7-hectares of vines in this tiny parcel, situated at the western fringe of the village and planted between 1985-1995. Clos du Meix’s sheltered location, (just below Les Castets on a south facing slope), its heavier clays and the fact that it is fully enclosed by a wall (and therefore protected from the cold, northern winds), always gives this wine excellent texture to go with its intense minerality. Contributing to the wine’s character is the boney soil in this vineyard, there’s only 30cm top soil before the vine’s roots hit the hard limestone. In recent years Clos du Meix has been really hitting its straps and the 2016 is no exception. The note below captures it well.

Today Lamy makes three cuvées from this beautiful southeast-facing plot (pictured above), which sits behind the village cemetery. The vines at the front of the picture are Pinot Noir, planted in 1960. Directly behind, on the steeper slope, are the Chardonnay vines that go into this cuvée, planted 17 years ago at a density of 14,000 vines per hectare. To the right of the picture you can see the Haute Densité parcel (approx. 30,000 vines per hectare and offered below) clearly. More on the two other cuvées below. This is a powerful white marl (chalky clay) terroir which always imposes its character (deep and structured) on the final wine. Another great value in the context of Burgundy prices today as the note below makes clear. Expect a layered, ripe yet hugely citric, racy and chalky white Burgundy. Expect something outstanding.

2013 was the first white release from this historically revered site. It comes from a tiny 0.38 hectare plot in the Clos – a walled area within the Les Gravières vineyard, a site at the northern end of Santenay, close to the Chassagne border. The Clos sits on a 30° slope and Lamy’s vines quickly tunnel into pure limestone. This has long been a renowned site with Dr. Jean Lavelle’s famous Burgundy classification already rating the vineyard as a Tête de Cuvée, the highest rating, in 1855. Lamy makes both white and red here, holding 0.28-hectares of Pinot in the same Clos. Most of the vines here are reasonably young. Lamy has increased the density and replaced substandard material with massale vines from a parcel of older vines planted in 1968. The outstanding quality that he is already delivering offers ample proof of the class of the terroir and also the quality of Lamy’s work in the vines. There’s more flesh and layers than the St-Aubin cuvées, yet the same crystalline purity and crunchy, mineral freshness. Both red and white from this vineyard are standouts this year.

En Remilly is one of Lamy’s prestige terroirs, sitting as it does above the Côte de Beaune’s grand cru vineyards, and produces one of his finest and most sought after wines. It is priced accordingly but still a bargain for a 1er cru of this brilliant class. Lamy has two hectares in this vineyard, planted in 1989 and farms two distinct parcels that sit just above the Chevalier-Montrachet grand cru. One of these parcels is close to his Clos de la Chatenière vineyard and is a warmer terroir on a loosely-knit mix of clay and limestone. The second is a far rockier site on pretty much pure limestone, directly adjacent to Chevalier. This latter parcel brings a cutting tension to the former’s fleshy, layered fruit. The 2016 is an absolutely riveting example, both layered and super mineral, of this outstanding terroir.

This is another of the Lamy benchmarks and perhaps his most famous wine. The Clos is a specific site, enclosed by dry-stone walls, within the larger Chatenière vineyard in St-Aubin. Lamy has 1.25-hectares in the Clos and the vines here are 60 years old. For all intents and purposes, this is a monopole, as Lamy is the only grower able to bottle a separate wine from this site and to label it accordingly. Colin-Morey is the only other grower that has a small parcel and he blends it into his la Chatenière bottling. It’s a south-facing vineyard, set just back and around the bend from En Remilly and Les Murgers des Dents de Chien. It is worked entirely by hand as the vineyard has a 40% slope and incredibly rocky soils making tractor work too dangerous. This gradient and the southern aspect also ensure that the vines receive plenty of sun while the rocky, limestone rich soils (20 centimetres of rocky top soil over hard, compact limestone) give the wines a piercing minerality that perfectly offset the low-yielding intensity. The 2016 is wonderfully deep while maintaining the vibrant minerality for which this site is renowned. Stunning.

Lamy has only 0.25 hectares, so we only get a few cases. This brilliant hillside vineyard borders, on one side, the Puligny vines of Champ Gain and sits above the grand cru le Montrachet. The vines here were planted in 1985 and are also affected by millerandé resulting in low yields. A ‘murger’ is a pile of stones or a wall made from the rocks extracted from a vineyard’s soil. Such a name suggests that this place has plenty of fragmented stones and that they are as sharp as ‘dog’s teeth’. It’s a high altitude, rocky site that gives a wine of surprisingly silky texture and depth, yet, as with all the Lamy wines, you will find plenty of intense, chalky minerality.

This singular wine comes from 0.7-hectares in Derrière Chez Edouard, planted in the year 2000, at a density of roughly 30,000 vines to the hectare. Yes, you did read correctly (the vines are spaced around 30cm apart in 1m rows). At such a density, Lamy typically gets a maximum of three tiny clusters per vine (sometimes one and sometimes none!) and the entire plot only yields enough juice to fill the contents of a single barrel. Lamy’s trials with this spacing have been deemed a qualitative success and he has subsequently rolled out this program in a number of other parcels including Les Tremblots (Puligny, 22,000 vines/ha) and, gulp, on his soupçon of vines in Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet (24,000 vines/ha). As you would imagine, distributor allocations of Lamy’s Haute Densité cuvées rarely top more than a few cases and the wines are seldom tasted in the cellars. How does this differ from the other cuvée from the same site? More intensity, more salinity, more mineral concentration (even though that’s hard to imagine) and somehow less overt fleshiness. It’s like the vines are sucking even more from their soils and the result is something completely unique. Cropped at an astonishing 100 grams per vine, there’s 42 bottles for Australia and six magnums.

Lamy already makes a terrific, old vine cuvée from just under a hectare in Les Tremblots, planted between 1946 and 1970. The HD portion of the parcel has massale selection vines interplanted between a few of these rows, bringing the density up to 22,000 vines per hectare. Although Lamy admits he had created a rod for his own back – his HD parcels require more than twice the work of his regular parcels, for a paltry 100 grams per vine on average – he is obviously thrilled by the class of wine he is achieving—the high ripeness, acidity and mineral intensity equating to something special. With only 12 bottles and three magnums this vintage, the less we say the better!

Yes we realise that the price is now off the charts but we get only six bottles (depending on the vintage) from a handkerchief-sized 0.05-hectares parcel, so we take what we can get. And the wine is certainly outstanding and rare. It was mostly replanted in the 1970s and although the Lamy family have farmed the vines here for three generations he has only recently purchased this grand cru plot (obviously for a crazy sum of money). It’s a parcel of vines that borders the southeast corner of Bâtard, right next to Domaine d’Auvenay’s plot (if that makes you feel any better about the price). The density today is 24,000 vines per hectare. In our (admittedly biased) opinion, this is arguably this Grand Cru’s finest and most detailed expression. Unlike most of its contemporaries, it is entirely unfettered by new oak (only one barrique is produced), allowing the drinker to get straight to the heart of the matter.

This wine was previously a village bottling – labelled Le Paradis – based on declassified parcels of younger vine 1er Cru Saint-Aubin from the sites of Les Frionnes, Les Castets, Sur le Sentier du Clou and Derrière chez Edouard. With the fruit having come of age and now deemed 1er Cru quality, Olivier has promoted the Paradis bottling accordingly. Yet it is worth stressing that this wine is still priced as a village! It’s a testament to the integrity of this Domaine that Olivier waited until the vines were more than 30 years old before making the decision to bottle the wine under the 1er Cru designation. This year Lamy worked with roughly 80% whole bunches, no new oak and did not sulphur the wine at all until bottling. A 1er Cru red Burgundy at this price level and quality is something rare indeed! It’s outstanding, as all the Lamy reds are this year. There are only 12 bottles for Australia.

Surrounded by 1er Cru sites, the evocatively named Les Hâtes is one of the best village terroirs in Santenay. Lamy’s tiny 0.67-hectare plot is in the heart of the Les Hâtes climat, in the original walled vineyard. It’s a little known fact that a 19^th century owner of this vineyard, M. Duvault-Blochet, also owned Domaine de la Romanée-Conti at the same time. This comes mostly from a blend of young vines, massale selected (from d’Angerville and Henri Boillot), and planted in 1999 on quality rootstock that produces small berries and bunches. There is also a parcel of older vines. This year Lamy worked with roughly 80% whole bunches, no new oak and did not sulphur the wine at all until bottling. As someone who drinks a fair bit of Burgundy I can only say that this is an undeniable bargain, and that the score below sells it a tad short. There’s loads of texture, there’s age worthy structure there’s loads of complexity (wild fruits, something earthy, etc.) and there’s a long driven, chalky finish. It the kind of wine that keeps bringing you back to the glass and delivers pleasure and interest in spades. In short, it’s the kind of red Burgundy that we so very rarely find any more at this price level.

With their dense, clay-based soils, Chassagne’s lower lying climats are ideally suited to reds, and this wine comes from a parcel of vines planted in the 1960s (and hence labelled as Vieilles Vignes). The Domaine farms a 1.06-hectare plot in La Goujonne in the middle of the village and, again, this was raised in used barrels. Lamy worked with roughly 80% whole bunches and did not sulphur the wines at all until bottling. Olivier Lamy’s reds are getting more and more precise and offering more and more finesse. This is a perfect example of this reality.

This has long been one of Olivier Lamy’s finest reds, year in, year out. It comes from just under a hectare of vines in the lower slope of the Derrière chez Edouard where the soils have more clay. The vines here are more than 50 years old and gift very small, yet ripe and intensely flavoured bunches that produce a deeply intense and layered wine. Again, this was raised in used barrels and Lamy worked with roughly 80% whole bunches and did not sulphur the wines at all until bottling. Another bargain. The note below sums this up reasonably well although it does not need cellaring. Yes it will age, but it is already delicious. Do not hesitate!

Lamy’s red from this site comes from a tiny 0.28 hectare parcel of 45-year-old vines in the Clos (see the note above for the white from this site for more details on the vineyard). It’s a very long and perfumed wine made with the 80% whole bunch vinification adding to the wine’s brightness, structure and tapering finish. Simply great Santenay.