2015 Burgundy from Guillon: Intense Wines from Intense Men

Last March, I found myself walking from Domaine Guillon’s chilly cellars to lunch with Alexis Guillon. We’d just finished tasting 2016 from barrel (looking great!) and the 2015s from bottle. “Just how special is vintage 2015?” I asked. Alexis told me he’d been talking to his father-in-law (also a winegrower) and other older growers in the village about the same question. “They told me that once in a lifetime you experience a vintage like this. 1959, 1947, 1929 – 2015 is like that, they told me. Perhaps the greatest vintage I’ll ever see.”

This is the eighth time I’ve written about the new vintage from Jean-Michel Guillon. By this point, most of you know that these are the hardest working, most talented, and least compromising winegrowers in all of Burgundy. Now 30 years since he stepped off a train in Burgundy with no vines and no winemaking experience, Jean-Michel farms

Jean-Michel and his son Alexis work the vineyards themselves (especially in August, when other winemakers take vacation just as the vines reach their most critical stage). They demand nothing less that perfectly ripe fruit, which allows them to make long, slow, intense fermentations running 3-5 weeks – extracting tons of flavor and only the most suave, ripe, tannins.

Then they age their wines in the finest French oak money can buy. After Domaine Romanee-Conti and the Hospices de Beaune, Jean-Michel and Alexis are the single biggest buyers of new French oak in Burgundy ever year. Where growers who pick less ripe fruit and extract less during fermentation can find new oak overwhelm their wines, Guillon’s juice is so intense and deep that it needs the softening only new oak can give and absorbs the woody flavors with ease.

It seems to me that sometime around vintage 2011 or 2012, Jean-Michel and Alexis found the perfect match of forest, cooper, and toast level for each vineyard and cuvee they make. So with the breathtaking fruit of 2015 came into the winery, they were ready to produce the best wines they’ve ever made.

What Are The Wines Like?
The easy way to talk about a new vintage is to say, “It’s like xxxx” or, perhaps, “A cross between yyyy and zzzz.” I don’t think that approach really works in understanding the 2015 Guillon reds.

Yes, it’s definitely true that 2015 is a great vintage at Domaine Guillon and the quality of the wines certainly should be compared to 2002, 2005, 2009 and 2010 here. Both Wine Advocate and Burghound have this as the finest vintage in Burgundy since 2005. Tanzer says it reminds him of 1990 and that many growers think it’s a better, longer-lived, version of 1985. And, as I mentioned, Jean-Michel and Alexis think 1959 and 1947 are appropriate benchmarks.

At the end of the day, though, Guillon’s 2015s are not exactly like any recent vintage. They are every bit as ripe as in 2005 and 2009, but the fruit flavors are fresher, move vivid and vivacious. They match 2005 and 2010 in sheer quantity of tannins, but the 2015s are so much more silky smooth as they finish. In fact, the most common word I find in my tasting notes is “silk.” In some cases it’s silk flowing over a fine breeze of ripe, juicy, vivacious fruit. And in others it’s a silk glove adding finesse to the iron fist inside. But whatever else you may say about Guillon’s stunning 2015s, you’ll have to agree that they have amazingly silky textures.

They are also more detailed, precise and delineated than any young Guillon wines I recall tasting. Yes the Gevrey 1er Crus are dense, deep, and super-intense and need some time to open up and strut their stuff. But even at the high-end, there’s a fantastic purity and clarity to the flavors that run right on through the long and generous finishes.

Best of all, I think Tanzer’s comments about the early drinkability of 2015 red Burgundy overall applies here as well. Most of these wines are delicious right now (although some need an hour or two of air) and are easy to taste and enjoy at table. And the supple tannins and lovely balance of fruit, earth and spice means you’ll probably be able to check in on their development with pleasure anytime you’d like. Unlike the 2005s (and some 2010s) that have shut-down hard, these 2015s are likely to stay open and delicious across most of their development.

What to Buy?
The easy answer: “Buy all of them and as much as you can!” Unfortunately – and as we warned you last year – the 30% decline in yield in 2015 and disastrously short 2016 harvest coupled with exploding global demand for Jean-Michel’s wines means that these 2015s are more expensive than in the past. All remain substantially under-priced relative to the Guillons’ neighbors and our prices are more than competitive. But, still, we realize choices must be made.

Feel free to call us and we’ll be happy to develop recommendations to fit your personal tastes, cellar preferences, and budget. But if you’re only buying one Guillon 2015, make it:

• Guillon Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Champonnets VV Cuvee Margaux 2015 – From 90 year-old vines, Jean-Michel only bottles the old vines separately in years so great that the rest of the Champonnets cuvee can stand the loss. Only the fourth time this has ever been made – the others were 2002, 2005 and 2009 – and only 75 cases bottled. Named for Jean-Michel’s mother, it’s dense, powerful, a bit chocolaty and very, very, long. I waited until Jean-Michel had consumed a bit of his own wine at our wine dinner before asking for 10 cases of this. You will not find it elsewhere.

Other wines to pay special attention to:

• Guillon Fixin Hauts Crais 2015 – Less dark, dense, and structured than the other wines in this offer, the 2015 Fixin is a joy to drink right now and is just going to get better. It’s very vivid and fresh with ripe red berry fruit and a mouthwatering finish. This is fantastic value and there are a few magnums, too.
• Guillon Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Les Champeaux 2015 – The other 1er Crus usually capture more attention, but Champeaux is a really, really, beautiful wine in 2015 with fine minerality an excellent length.
• Guillon Morey Saint Denis 1er Cru La Riotte 2015 – Always one of the more sexy wines of this set, in 2015 it’s a bit more trim and shows the fantastic silky purity of the vintage but still has plenty of generous fruit. Not as firm or earthy as the Gevrey wines, but really fun.
• Guillon Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru Petit Chapelle 2015 – This normally a wine you really have to work at to taste. With Grand Cru-level concentration and structure, it can be hard to penetrate young. In 2015, Burghound says, “while it would be infanticide to open one early, this just makes one feel like drinking it.”

You’ll see all the wines listed on our website with further descriptions and pricing. Mix/match among these bottling for best six- and twelve-bottle savings.

Before Chateauneuf: A Little History of Lirac

Lirac’s 1,700 acres of vineyard are essentially the other half of Chateauneuf du Pape. Lirac sits on the West bank of the Rhone river, opposite Chateauneuf. The climate and subsoil are essentially identical to Chateauneuf, and – like Chateauneuf – most of the vineyards are covered in large, rounded, stones called “galet” left behind by the Rhone when it filled the entire valley in ancient times.

When the Papacy arrived in Avignon in the early 1300s and began searching out sources of wine for communion and celebration, Lirac was quickly identified as the source of the very finest wine in the region. We know that Pope Innocent IV paid a premium for the 20 casks of Lirac he purchased in 1357.

Lirac’s Fame
Even after the Pope’s returned to Rome, Lirac’s fame as the Rhone’s best wine continued to grow. Both King Henry IV (late 1500s) and Louis XIV (1600s-early 18th Century) regularly served Lirac at their courts. From Lirac’s river port of Roquemaure, the region’s red wine reached England and Holland by the late 1500s and by the end of the 1700s Lirac was, as the Oxford Companion to Wine explains, “a much more important wine center than Chateauneuf du Pape.”

With high demand came the temptation for fraud, and unscrupulous winemakers throughout the Rhone – including in Chateauneuf – often tried to pass their “inferior” wines off as Lirac. To help stamp out this fraud, in 1737 the king of France ordered that casks shipped from Roquemaure should be branded “CDR” – for Cotes du Rhone – as a sign that they were authentic and of the highest quality.

Lirac thrived as the Southern Rhone’s premier wine region right up until the 1860s. By the end of the 1870s, though, the vines were almost all gone and the economy in ruins. When Rhone wines began to return to fame and fortune after WWII, it was Chateauneuf that took the lead with Lirac only gradually recovering as a source of everyday rosé priced below the better known wines of neighboring Tavel.

The Accidental Introductin of Phylloxera
A large part of the blame falls to an unnamed winemaker at Lirac’s Chateau de Clary. In a well-meaning experiment with native American grape vines imported from California, he introduced the North American vine louse called phylloxera to Lirac’s vineyards in 1863. Own-rooted European grapes had no resistance to the pest, and soon vines across the region began to wither and die. Phylloxera eventually spread across all of Europe, cutting wine production by 50-80% as it expanded until growers discovered how to defeat it by grafting European vinifera vines onto American lambrusca root stock.

Lirac, like the rest of the Rhone Valley, began to replant and recover at the beginning of the 20th Century, only to be set back by economic crisis, WWI, and increased competition for everyday red wine from Algeria and the South of France. As in neighboring Chateauneuf, growers began banding together in the 1930s to establish quality standards and promote their region. But, while Chateauneuf was able to complete the process and achieve legal recognition for its rules and “brand” by 1937, Lirac moved more slowly and was unable to complete the process before WWII brought an end to wine region creation. “Lirac” didn’t receive its formal recognition until 1947.

With its head start, better marketing, and – perhaps – decision to ban rosé in the appellation, Chateauneuf steadily improved its reputation and demand throughout the mid-20th Century. With more demand came higher prices, and with higher prices came the ability to invest further in quality in the vineyard and winery. Lirac growers lagged and increasingly turned to less expensive rosé wines that could be made in large quantities and turned into cash immediately after the vintage. By the 1980s, Lirac was best known in the wine world as a source of everyday red Cotes du Rhone and as a good value alternative to the more expensive pink wines from neighboring Tavel.

Fortunately for us, several vigneron continued to understand Lirac’s potential and were willing to invest and take risks to return the region to fine wine status. Christophe Delorme at Domaine de la Mordoree, Henri de Lanzac of Chateau de Segries, and Alain Jaume of Grand Veneur led the charge and, today, these three remain benchmark producers who are helping to return Lirac to the fame it once held.

To Try: Dom Grand Veneur Clos de Sixte Lirac