If you are not familiar with the buzz about young Charles Lachaux in Burgundy, I highly recommend you to read the full story on the Rarewine website. He is changing everyone’s favourite wine region.
The changes he adopted in grape growing are fascinating, but the big step is probably going 100% unoaked. Wine prices are through the roof already, forget finding value here, but I wanted to get a taste of it. So here you are, a Cote de Nuits Villages wine for more than 300 Euros. Well, at least the bottle look like such, it’s definitely beautifully designed.
I love red wines without oak influence, but I’m not sure if I prefer this style from Burgundy. This smells like a Beaujolais Cru, i.e. semi-carbonic, it’s just more spicy perhaps. Pretty dark cherry notes, fruit quality is great and the purity, definition is noteworthy. But it is so heavily tannic that i have not ever seen in Burgundy – I like tannins a lot but it’s too much even for me. Quality tannins, though, so perhaps they will soften sufficiently with age – it might need 5, 10 years for that, if not more, it’s basically undrinkable ATM. On the other hand, it might live for 4-5 decades.
I don’t know if it can evolve to something truly great. Perhaps it can. But I also miss the classical Burgundy character to some extent, this is completely different. It left me with many questions. Thought provoking for sure. All in all, a super interesting wine, 92 points.