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| Domaine Trapet | ||||||||||||||
The current winemaker, the gracious and articulate Jean-Louis Trapet, is committed to upgrading the condition of the vineyards and the quality of the winemaking at the estate. Like many of the top winemakers in his generation, Jean-Louis has adopted the principles of biodynamique agriculture in an attempt to restore the health and vitality of the soil in these ancient and respected parcels. His farming techniques are completely organic and no synthetic herbicides or pesticides are used. Harvesting is done manually and the grapes are sorted twice, once in the field and once at the sorting tables, to eliminate unripe or rotten fruit. In the cellars, Jean-Louis is committed to completely natural, non-interventionist winemaking. His emphasis is on the gentle handling of the grapes, musts and wines to preserve the purity of their fruit and allow the characteristics of his great terroirs to shine through. The wines are fermented in open top vats with natural yeasts. 30% of the grapes are fermented in whole clusters and 70% are destemmed. The wines are aged 15-18 months in barrels which are 35-75% new (depending on the wine) and all from French forests. Little to no sulphur is used and the wines are not fined or filtered. The wines are racked once before being gently bottled. Jean-Louis considers 2000 to be a break-through vintage for his estate as the cumulative impact of the changes in agricultural practice takes full effect. As a group, his wines are very expressive of Pinot Noir and the Côtes de Nuits: dense and rich with lovely aromas, concentrated, pure, sweet fruit and smooth, round tannins. Reviews From the International Wine Cellar (Mar/Apr 2003): "Like other Burgundy vignerons who work organically, Jean-Louis Trapet bottles wines that are still alive in a literal sense and thus can truly showcase the soil they're made from. But for this taster at least, the Trapet wines come across as fresher in their youth than most wines made this way. Trapet is fond of saying that he's doing less work in the cellar as his grapes get better. As a rule, he's moving toward gentler extraction: shorter macerations and less frequent pigeages Trapet's 2000s spent 21 to 23 days on their skins, and his 2001s just 17 or 18. Like many of his colleagues on the Cote de Nuits, Trapet told me that grape sugars were adequate but not particularly high in 2001. Vintage 2000 was rich in sugar, and the wines have fine tannins, but there's a confit character to the fruit, and the tannins seem almost a bit burnt," he went on. The 2001 have more sappiness, and the tannins are denser." © International Wine Cellar From the International Wine Cellar (Mar/Apr 2004): "Jean-Louis Trapet told me that the cool August of 2002 prolonged the vegetative cycle, resulting in wines with an especially sound sugar/acid balance. But 2001 is more classic, he added. The 2002 had been racked after the 2003 harvest, and the first three wines were being prepared for bottling in mid-November. The crus were still aging in barrel." © International Wine Cellar From the The Wine Advocate, Issue 151 (Feb 2004): "Jean-Louis Trapet, a man who faces life with a smile and a twinkle in his eye, has fully converted his estate to bio-dynamic farming. He believes the "yo-yo" temperatures that characterized 2002’s growing season is responsible for the irregular flowering of mid-june as well as the thick skins that the grapes formed. The estate began harvesting immediately after the storm of the 21st of September, described by Trapet as a "catastrophe" for Marsannay’s lower-lying areas (there was 50cm – almost 20 inches – of water in shops along the N74). His comments echoed those of his neighbors, stating that the storm barely impacted Gevrey and had little effect on the grapes in Marsannay if they were harvested quickly. "The skins were thick, therefore wouldn’t burst, and we harvested before the plants could absorb the rain water." © The Wine Advocate From the The Wine Advocate, Issue #170 (April 2007): “Young Jean-Louis Trapet evinces an inspiring degree of sincerity and that rarest of human virtues “humbition . He is clearly determined to return his family’s estate to the celebrated place they occupied on the international stage for much of the late 20 th century, and thinks a critical tool is the practice of biodynamics, in which the domaine was recently officially certified. Nature certainly cooperated in 2005 almost regardless of method let alone metaphysics, and this is a promising collection. The wines are not sulfured at all during their elevage, and only minimally at bottling, demanding that the typical taster re-calibrate his or her palette accordingly.” © The Wine Advocate From the The Wine Advocate, Issue #143 (March/April 09): “Jean-Louis Trapet picked on the late side in 2007, between September 10 and 17. "Before that the grapes had too much malic acidity," explained Trapet, who told me a lot of fruit came in at 13% potential alcohol, with some lots reaching 14.9%! Not surprisingly, he did not chaptalize his wines. "We got a lot of concentration at the end," he summarized. "Eventually we had 120 days between flowering and harvest, and that made a real difference in 2007." And the stems were riper in 2007 than they had been the previous year. None of the 2007s had been racked yet when I tasted them at the beginning of November. The 2006 crus, notes Trapet, will need a good seven or eight years of bottle aging, the grand crus perhaps even more. (A Patrick Lesec Selection; importers include The Stacole Company, Boca Raton, FL and Classic Wine Imports, Boston, MA) ” © The Wine Advocate |
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