Heitz Lochardet Meursault Gruyaches Blanc 2016

The young Armand Heitz directs this small but growing domaine whose range of reds will continue to expand over the next few years. With respect to the 2016 vintage, like most of his colleagues he lamented the "incredibly damaging effects of the frost along with subsequent losses due to the severe attack of mildew. I'm a relative newbie but no one that I spoke to said that they had ever seen frost damage like this before. We did however in the end manage to arrive at the harvest and the trick was not so much to eliminate damaged fruit as there really was very little of it. What we did watch out for carefully though was fruit that had differing maturities due to the second generation fruit not being quite as ripe as the first generation. As usual I used 100% whole clusters in the vinifications and vinified quite softly as I knew from the thick skins that the necessary structure would be there naturally with no need to push the extractions. As to the wines, I really quite like them because for me they combine the best attributes of both 2015 and 2014." I agree with Heitz' take and since I have been visiting the domaine I would say that this group of 2016s is the best that I have seen to this point. Heitz noted that they were bottled in August, 2016 without fining or filtration. - Importer Note