SAINT-ROMAIN 2018
SAINT-ROMAIN 2018
Grape variety
Tasting notes
Colour: Pale gold flecked with green.
Bouquet: Aromas of lime and white flowers with mineral grace notes.
Palate: In the mouth, it has good minerality, which time will make smoother and mellower.
Wine and food pairing
Its minerality makes it an amiable partner for delicate fish (fried or, better still, steamed). It is also to be enjoyed with poached eggs and seared or marinated vegetables. It goes well with soft-centred cheeses like Camembert, whose creamy texture will be nicely balanced by the slightly mineral acidity of this handsome wine.
Serving temperature
Ageing potential
History
Saint-Romain in the Côte de Beaune stands at the foot of a high cliff but at an elevation which enables it to look out over a wide stretch of countryside. 100,000 years ago, bears and lions roamed here and it has been a focus of human activity since neolithic times. It was one of the first places in Burgundy where Celts and Gallo-Romans cultivated the vine.
The Saint-Romain appellation, instituted in 1947, is for both red (Pinot Noir) and white (Chardonnay) wines.
Vinification and maturing
100% hand harvested, the Chardonnay grapes were sorted on a table at their arrival at the winery. After a delicate and slow pressing, the juices were cooled.
The juice were then placed into Burgundian 228L oak barrels to finish the vinification process before an ageing on lees during 14 months and then blended and matured in stainless steel tank for 2 to 3 months.
Vintage : 2018
It is quite hardly to sum up the vintage 2018 in a few words! Winter, grey and humid was followed by a capricious spring, subject to frosts and alternating times of sunshine and storms on an almost daily basis from May to the mid-June, making this period particularly stressful for our people in the vineyards.
Then came an incredible time of nice weather, hot, very hot and even heatwave periods until the end of… October!
Another particular vintage which looks like no other! As rainfalls episodes were particularly localized, we had to deal with very different degree of ripeness from a plot to another, depending of the water volume received by each vineyard.
In 2018, as in other French wine region, quality and quantity were very satisfactory on our whole vineyard and were are very pleased with the quality of the vinified juices currently ageing in 228 L. Burgundian barrels in our cellars.
Harvest took place on our vineyards between the end of August (27th) and the 18th of September under a hot and persistent autumn sun. Even if the weather was very nice, the harvest period was very long and demanding in the vineyards as well as in the winery, due to the particularly different stages of ripeness. This is, without doubt, what one will retain from this harvest: so different ripeness degrees and so very different harvesting time from a village to another and even from a parcel to another in the same vineyard!
White wines were mostly harvested first in order to keep a nice acidity on this particularly solar vintage.