Wine Advisor
Hubert Lamy, Criots Batard Montrachet Grand Cru 2010
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Antonio Galloni
Lamy’s 2010 Criots-Batard-Montrachet is pure sensuality in the glass. Soft, floral, very lightly honeyed notes caress the palate in this weightless, gracious white. The Criots is all about understatement and pure class. There is an integrity and centeredness to the fruit that is simply striking. This is yet another fabulous showing from Lamy. Anticipated maturity: 2014+. Lamy is one of the great, not yet widely discovered domaines in all of Burgundy. Readers should do whatever they can to check out these fabulous wines. Olivier Lamy told me he began harvesting on September 12th and had to rush to get all the fruit in by the 23rd as sugars began to mount quickly, while imminent rain was in the forecast. Yields were about 30% lower than normal. Lamy told me he found the vintage hard to read because the weather was quite volatile in the way it changed directions several times during the year. The malos here were quite drawn out. In some cases the sugars took a year to completely ferment, which meant the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations finished around the same time. I tasted this year in early July and found the Lamy cellar to be among the coldest I visited, so it is hardly a surprise to hear that the wines were slow to develop. That is also true of the 2011s, which were mostly through their malos elsewhere, but not at Lamy. From top to bottom, this is a fabulous set of wines that richly deserves a broader audience. A Becky Wasserman Selection, Le Serbet, imported by Polaner Selections, Mt. Kisco, NY; tel. (914) 244-0404
Reviewed by: Antonio Galloni
Lamy's 2010 Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet is pure sensuality in the glass. Soft, floral, very lightly honeyed notes caress the palate in this weightless, gracious white. The Criots is all about understatement and pure class. There is an integrity and centeredness to the fruit that is simply striking. This is yet another fabulous showing from Lamy.
About the Producer
Hubert Lamy / Hubert Lamy Saint Aubin, Côte de Beaune Puligny Montrachet / Chassagne Montrachet / Santenay French magazine selected as 10 winemakers to support Burgundy for the next decade The Lamy family's history of growing grapes in Saint Aubin dates back to 1640. Hubert learned management and brewing from start to finish with his father Jean. It was renamed Hubert Lamy in 1973 and only holds 8 hectares of vineyards. The young owner and winemaker Olivier Lamy has experienced the baptism of wine-producing countries in the world, and followed Jean-Nicolas Méo in the famous winery Méo-Camuzet to learn the cultivation of natural dynamic methods, and has very high strictness on the quality and yield of grapes standard. In 1995, he returned to the winery to take over the brewing work and inherited the mantle. The vineyard area has now been expanded to 17 hectares. At the same time as the expansion of the wine cellar, it was also changed to the design of natural gravity. The winery has long become the leading liquor maker in Burgundy, France. 70% of the production is sold out by foreign buyers, which is a testament to the high level of Lamy's wines. In terms of planting, the winery adopts the home-style leading branch, and from May to August, green harvesting is carried out every month to take into account the possible changes in the climate and gradually reduce the yield. And it has already been changed to an organic method to strengthen the ecological constitution in the vineyard. The special thing about Hubert Lamy is that he abandoned the small oak barrels of Barrique (225 liters) commonly used in Burgundy, and used a small amount of 300 liters, most of which were fermented and stored in large oak barrels of 600 liters, and almost no longer stirred the barrels after completion. And no filtration and clarification are carried out to maintain the natural pure and dense flavor of the wine, amplifying the terroir flavor to the extreme, which is impressive. Another special feature of the winery is that the highest record per hectare is an ultra-high planting density of up to 30,000 grapes (usually about 12,000), so that a vine often leaves only 2 bunches of fruits, and all the flavors are preserved. Concentrated in fruit grains. In addition, Saint Aubin village is relatively poor and full of soft calcareous soil soil conditions, so that each grape must strive to take root in order to seek nutrients, and thus absorb rich minerality, maintaining the unique concentration and density of the winery. Degrees, like ancient Sparta-like rigorous training, bear the perfect fruit of healthy concentrated concentration. The winery style has a distinctly sharp acidity and at the same time feels the impression of a concentrated and dense fruit, which develops over time as the flavour layers emerge. Bold planting and brewing techniques have created a great Burgundy that is pure, neat, and terroir-led.
