Domaine Comtes Lafon Volnay Santenots Milieu 1er Cru 2021

From a huge 3.78 ha holding of 40+ year old vines planted in shallow, high clay content soil sitting above a bed of solid limestone. Here the nose is firmly reduced and revealing nothing. Otherwise there is good punch on the lighter weight flavors that possess lovely delineation while displaying focused power on the firm, serious and austere finale. This is an excellent example of 'power without weight' and a wine that should repay up to a decade of keeping.

Producer note

As I reported last year, Dominique Lafon has retired in favor of his daughter Léa and his nephew Pierre, though he remains active as an advisor. On this trip I met with Pierre, who with respect to the reds noted that "we picked from the 17th to the 27th of September and brought in mostly clean fruit though some parcels needed more sorting than others. Yields were not good as we were off some 70% and as such, we did not declassify any young vines to create our usual cuvée of Volnay villages. On the plus side of that though is that I'm not unhappy that yields were low because if not, the fruit would have never adequately ripened. We did a normal vinification because as difficult as the growing season was in the vines, it was easy in the cuverie. Potential alcohols were in the 12 to 13% range, so a few wines were chaptalized at the lower end. As to the wines, they have changed significantly during the élevage and continue to improve month by month so I'm not sure when they will be bottled. They should age well but also drink well young as they are well-balanced." Note that the domaine bottles its wines with the Diam brand of composite corks using the model known as 30.