Richard Leroy, 2016 Update
I did have quite a good system going with my reports on the work and the wines of Richard Leroy. I stop off to taste with Richard every February, usually taking in the vintage currently well established in élevage, and soon to be bottled. Then, from my own cellar, I usually taste and report on the vintage two years prior to this. So last year, for example, I reported on 2013 and 2011, and the year before that 2012 and 2010. It all made for a rather neat series of reports on nearly-bottled and now-in-distribution wines.
Unfortunately the short vintage in 2012 has disrupted my little scheme. The restricted yields, while not as disastrously low as they were in 2008, combined with the wines making a stuttering appearance on the market, meant I slipped up and missed out on buying the 2012 vintage. Then, when I did track some down and duly ordered a few bottles, the merchant in question delivered more of the 2011 instead by mistake. By the time this was realised the 2012 was definitively sold out. The result is I have taken an enforced break from Richard’s wines in the 2012 vintage (although I have plenty of 2011s to play with).
The Wines
As a consequence I report here on the 2014 barrel samples tasted with Richard in February this year, but for my in-bottle tastings we skip 2012 and move on to the 2013 vintage, the wines just landed in my cellar in the past month or two. Before coming to the specifics of each wine, it is probably sensible to begin with a quick recap of the dramatic change in style here since the 2011 vintage. Up until that point Richard had been reducing his use of sulphur dioxide, but in 2011 the wine showed marked reduction and, building upon knowledge and experience he picked up on Burgundy, Richard decided to rely on the wine’s reduction to protect it, and made no sulphur dioxide addition at all.
