Domaine Olivier Merlin St-Veran Le Grand Bussiere 2015 750ml
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The Wine Advocate | RP 91
Published: Aug 31, 2017
The 2015 Saint-Veran Grand Bussiere has an understated bouquet that unfolds in the glass to reveal scents of honeysuckle, orange blossom and beeswax. It is not intense or generous, but certainly well defined. The palate is very well balanced with a fine line of acidity that clearly imparts more tension and suspense than the regular Saint-Véran, plus it fans out with conviction toward the finish. This is a splendid Saint-Véran from Olivier Merlin.
Olivier Merlin is one of the most respected winemakers in the Mâconnais. Not only does he oversee a portfolio bejewelled with quality, but he is just a bloody nice man, always positive in outlook with wit and humor. "I am surprised how the wines now show, because at the beginning of the season we had quite a lot of dryness," Olivier told me when I asked about his 2015s, "but at the end of the growing cycle around 25-30 August, there was a very strong and dry southerly wind with high temperatures around 35 to 37 degrees Celsius. This dried out the berries, concentrating the sugar but also the acidity. There were two decisions. There are people like me and Dominique Lafon who decided to pick early because the bunches were increasing by some half a degree of alcohol per day. Others that picked later, because rain was forecast for 3 to 5 September. Some people decided to wait afterwards, but the rain never came, so it was a good decision. I have one big press, and when I closed the door, there was no juice because the berries were so hard to extract. We had to go slow, but hard and long, for around four hours. For one hectoliter you needed 150kg of grapes instead of 130kg. At the beginning, I was comparing 2015 with 2003 or 2005, but in fact, they are completely different because during malolactic we did not lose any acidity due to the low malic acid. I have never had a vintage like that in 30 years. The wines are between 13.5-14.0% alcohol and 3.2-3.25 pH (similar to 2014) and 4gm/L total acidity. We used very little new wood. Nowadays, I use less than I once did and we bottled quite late, starting in November 2016 until January 2017. Next year I will be joined by my sons Théo and Paul, who are just finishing their studies. They will take some vineyard, and they'll have some good parcels en fermage, from a winemaker that does not have children. So we will have more cuvées of Pouilly-Fuissé and Saint-Véran amongst others. At the beginning, they will sell the grapes to the domaine." As usual, there is a clutch of delicious, terroir-driven wines from Merlin that include three or four wines from over the border in Beaujolais, his Moulin-à-Vent is definitely worth checking out. On his home turf, it was his Mâcon La Roche Vineuse Les Cras that really stood out, a fantastic wine surfeit with tension, complexity and flavor.
Drink Date: 2017 - 2027