If you’re a Burgundy lover, and an established subscriber, you know Harmand-Geoffroy. This is an estate we’ve championed since Day One at SommSelect, as it is unquestionably one of the most undervalued blue-chip producers in all of Burgundy.
And as a quick jaunt through the critical press for today’s wine will confirm, 2015 was a banner year for this Gevrey-Chambertin benchmark. Harmand-Geoffroy’s bottling from the “Lavaux-St. Jacques” Premier Cru is a perennial standout, but in 2015 it may well be the best of the lot. That’s saying something, given how many great producers stake a claim to Lavaux-St. Jacques, the largest Premier Cru in Gevrey. Working with a tiny parcel of some of the oldest vines in this storied cru, which many consider a Grand Cru-level site, Harmand-Geoffroy harnessed the power and ripeness of 2015 without sacrificing classic structure. Whereas so many 2015 red Burgundies simply turned up the volume, this one was more about adjusting the sound mix—the result being a resonant, reverberating wine of incredible detail. Not surprisingly, we do not have much, but we can offer up to six bottles per person to our best Burgundy customers today. There may not be a better blue-chip Burgundy value on the market, so act fast!
[PLEASE NOTE: This wine will ship from our warehouse the week of January 14th.]
Lavaux St. Jacques, as many of our reader know well, is a Premier Cru site at the mouth of the Combe de Lavaux, a narrow, snaking valley that runs west out of Gevrey-Chambertin and up into the forests above. It’s a relatively cool site because of the funnel effect of the combe, but also a site with a full-south exposition that collects all-day sun. If there’s a Lavaux Saint-Jacques ‘profile’ among the myriad bottlings that exist out there (there are more than 30 owners in this 9.5-hectare vineyard), it tends to lean toward darker fruit and a sinewy, muscular structure—not always as rich as the nearby Grand Crus but generally a powerful, woodsy, very ‘Gevrey’ expression of Pinot Noir. Harmand-Geoffroy’s interpretation is, in this regard, as textbook as it gets. English writer Remington Norman has this to say in his defining text, The Great Domaines of Burgundy: “The Harmands’ touch is clearly mastery. Their wines are all-too-attractive young, but age well.” I couldn’t agree more; since 2009, when Gerard Harmand passed down control of his estate to his son Philippe, the domaine has been on a roll. For my palate, these are some of the meatiest, most ‘masculine’ reds in Gevrey, but in recent years they’ve also shown greater polish and purity of fruit.
In recent years, the Harmands have focused their resources on improving consistency. In 1998, the family built a more modern winery facility, which coincided with a shift toward cleaner, less rustic wines. The property is organically farmed without chemical fertilizers, insecticides, or herbicides, which the family feels interrupt the natural life cycles of the vineyard. Today’s wine comes from Philippe and Gerard’s .7-hectare holding in Lavaux Saint-Jacques. The Harmand’s vines in this parcel were planted between 45 and 95 years ago, making their vines some of the oldest in the vineyard. Soil here is rugged limestone and marl which, when combined with the advanced vine age, produces wines of impressive concentration and depth. Grapes for this bottling are hand-harvested and de-stemmed before undergoing a five-day cold soak. Fermentation lasts 2-3 weeks before the wine is racked into a mix of mostly neutral small barrels along with a few new barrels. The wine rests for a year and a half until bottling without fining or filtration. The entire process lasts 3.5 years, culminating in the release of a mere 75 cases for the US each autumn. Its rarity makes its price all the more shocking.
It is also, as I noted above, a classically structured wine in a vintage known for many blowsy, ultra-ripe reds. There’s a tantalizing core of beautiful black cherry/black raspberry fruit that speaks to the heat of 2015, but there’s also a firm framework of tannin and acid that bodes well for aging. In the glass, it’s a concentrated garnet-red extending to the rim, with woodsy aromas of wild blackberry, Morello cherry, damp violets, black mushroom, grilled meat, warm spice, and loads of underbrush. Medium-plus in body, it is already seamless and very attractive given some time to breathe, but the real sweet spot for this wine is still a few years down the line. If you open a bottle soon (and you’ll probably have to), decant it about an hour before service in Burgundy stems at 60-65 degrees. Remaining bottles, if not greedily consumed soon thereafter, should be cellared and revisited over the next 15-20 years. This is a landmark wine in every respect—its price doesn’t come anywhere close to reflecting its quality. If you collect red Burgundy, it is a must-have—and a ‘must-pair’ with something gamey and woodsy, like the attached recipe. Talk about starting off the New Year right—this is it!
