Yannick Champ introducing the 2018

I'd like to discuss our 2018 wines, which we've been marketing since the end of last year. Since November 2020. It's true that this has been unusual given the current health issues. The major impact is linked to the restaurants being closed. This made our sales quite complicated, all around the world in fact. But most specifically here in France, where our friends who have restaurants... were forced to close their doors, resulting in complicating our sales here. Our 2018 vintage, just to remind you... was impacted by a year with heat-waves. 2018 was a very hot and dry year. This resulted in heavy storms. We had three major storms... with heavy "flooding" conditions, resulting in 60mm rainfalls pouring down in only a few minutes... In addition two hailstorms, both in the area of Prémeaux-Prissey, where we have six hectares of Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru. So our Clos des Corvées Monopole, and the Clos des Argillières. The first hailstorm was on July 4th. It hit us from the north. Next another hailstorm on July 12th, which hit us from the south. Because the rows are oriented East-West, they were hit from both sides, creating significant damage. It would have been an especially high-yield year, giving the vintage in Burgundy the reputation of an over-abundance. However for us, that wasn't really the case... because from our six hectares... of Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru, we had significant losses. On top of this, were the effects of that year's drought. It really dried up the grapes, because of evaporation, so we ended up with very little juice to be obtained from the grapes. There was also a rather high alcohol content, particularly where it was hail damaged. In spite of everything, the domaine's particular style of wine, emanating from our background, our culture of vineyard management and whole-harvest wine-making methods, provide a lovely freshness to our wines. This in spite of a somewhat high degree of alcohol, some of our wines have 15° natural alcohol. But they have good acidity, and a lovely freshness. These are wines I've begun tasting once again... with the few importers and customers who've managed... to travel here to Burgundy. We began tasting them about 2 weeks ago. It's been a great rediscovery, as I hadn't tasted them since bottling. So they're quite lovely really. It's a vintage which is relatively easy to drink. To drink at a fairly cool temperature, they are being kept at 14°C, 14 to 15°C and it's true that this gives them... a lovely freshness, a marked acidity, which is quite interesting. 2018 was also the first year for our new Savigny-Les-Beaune plot. It's called the "Dessus Les Gollardes", we're very pleased because it produced exceptional quality wine. There's an aspect to it... although this warrants verification... by comparing it with future years, but truly this first vintage... strongly reminds us of, reminds me of, a Côte de Nuits, I'm not sure why. Not so much a Côte de Beaune, though our Ladoix are clearly marked... as being Côte de Beaune, whereas this Savigny, perhaps linked to the year 2018, possibly due to its very rocky soil, I'm not sure yet. It's much more like a Côte de Nuits, making it a quite interesting wine. It only produced a very small yield of about 15 hectolitres per hectare. So it's a vineyard that merits investing a great deal of work, which we are setting up now. Which I hope will result in higher future yields. This year was significantly marked, by the total lack of white wine production. We didn't produce any white wines. We are, in theory, producers of three white wines since that year. With the white Savigny... the white Ladoix, along with... our Côteaux Bourguignons which we've... downgraded to a Vin de France, with our chardonnay maceration process. Given that our technical processes which we had planned, for making these particular wines... were not successful, to be frank. The wines were not able to develop the way we had hoped... alcohol levels were much too high, the acidity levels were way too low for the Chardonnay... So we preferred distilling our entire production of white wine. This means we'll only have red wines from 2018... and in small quantities. We didn't produce any rosé wines in 2018 either. We didn't make any of our "pinoterie" either. We did try a kind of pinoterie, but only as a sort of test. I'll say more about that at some point, but not until we decide if we market it. For now it's really too early to talk about that.