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Burghound: 88-91 Points
An overtly spicy nose combines notes of sandalwood, jasmine tea, anise, dark currant, plum and violet. There is again solid mid-palate density to the punchy and markedly mineral-driven flavors that deliver very fine length on the moderately austere finale. This is very Champs Perdrix in character, which is to say quite restrained if extremely pretty.
Bruno Clair's sons Edouard and Arthur have largely taken over the day-to-day responsibilities of running the domaine and this year the tasting was conducted by the latter. His view of the 2021 vintage was brutally straightforward in that "my father, whose been doing this for decades, calls it the most difficult in a very long time. The frost wiped out fully 50% of the crop in pinot and an incredible 70% in chardonnay. We of course tried to protect some of the earliest budding vineyards with warming candles but they didn't seem to do much good. However, if that's all that we faced it wouldn't have been so bad but the disease pressure, especially botrytis as we neared the harvest, was notably problematic. We picked from the 22nd of September and some parcels needed careful sorting and others almost none at all. Potential alcohols were perfectly fine at between 12 and 12.5% and a few wines were chaptalized. We used around 40% whole clusters for the vinification during a total cuvaison of 13 to 15 days. We vinified most softly than usual but this isn't to say that it was completely hands off as during that period we punched each cuvée down 5 to times. Despite all of the difficulties, we actually are extremely happy with the quality of the reds and especially with our Gevrey-based wines." I would echo Arthur Clair's view of the quality because while there is good to excellent quality everywhere in their portfolio, the Gevrey-based wines do indeed really stand out.
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