2019 Domaine de Lambrays Morey-St-Denis 1er Cru Le Loups

A NEW LOOK & RETURN TO FORM AT DOMAINES DES LAMBRAYS Domaine des Lambrays' extensive history has at times been its enemy. When your winemaker lists 1918 and 1937 as his favorite vintages, you might have to ask what's been going on for the last 80 years. In fact, the last decade has been busy at Domaine des Lambrays. Moet Hennessy acquired the winery in 2014, bringing a much needed influx of cash. With their new spending money, the Domaine converted to 100% organic and precision farming that has given much better fruit quality. The Domaine's oldest vines are planted perpendicularly to Morey-Saint-Denis' slope, long causing issues with shading only recently fixed by ambitious (& expensive) new canopy management techniques. In the winery, plots are now vinified separately before assessing the final blend, another quantum leap from the old process of fermenting entire vineyards together in large tanks. All of these updates have helped usher in a new era under winemaker Jacques Desvauges. After years with the winery, 2019 is the first vintage made purely under Desvauges's direction. It was perhaps the ideal vintage to inherit as a winemaker: yields were way down (about half the permitted max across the board, as low as 15hl/ha in the Grand Cru) and a warm September lead to one of the most "classic" harvest windows the Domaine had seen in years. Desvauges admits his good luck when he describes having little to do in '19 besides overseeing the parcellaire winemaking described above and adding a few new barrels from Francois Freres. These 2019s are exciting in heralding the reinvigoration of a historic Domaine with boundless potential. - WP