2017 domaine michel lafarge, volnay premier cru, les caillerets
Why We're Buying
“Elegance.” “Perfumed.” “Purity.” These are just a few adjectives that wine critics have used to describe Domaine Michel Lafarge Les Caillerets. The pinot noir has an ethereal complexion, rife with vibrant berries, fine tannins, and succulent aromas. While the wine leads with style, it also packs substance. That includes a richness that rivals Croesus, with touches of smoke and minerality. After trying the offering, wine critic Allen Meadows praised it as “breathtakingly good.”
Critics Scores
John Gilman
The 2017 Lafarge family’s version of Caillerets is also beautifully classical in its expression of this great terroir, with the nose delivering a constellation of red plums, cherries, lovely spice tones, gamebird, cocoa powder, iron-infused minerality and a touch of new wood. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied and utterly refined out of the blocks, with a great core of fruit, superb backend mineral drive, ripe tannins and excellent balance and grip on the long and complex finish. Great juice.
Burghound.com
Abundant spice elements add to the considerable appeal of the overtly floral nose of red and blue pinot fruit. Like the Mitans the middle weight flavors are both classy and sophisticated thanks to the fine-grained tannins shaping the intensely mineral-inflected finish that is Zen-like in its harmony and balance. Note however that this too is very clearly constructed to age and is a wine that will need at least 5ish years and should be capable of rewarding 15+.
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Volnay 1er Cru Les Caillerets unfurls in the glass with a classy bouquet of crunchy cassis, red berries, dried flowers and dark chocolate that's still comparatively primary, with little hint of the tertiary complexity to come. On the palate, the wine is medium-bodied, chalky and tensile with a firm core of ripe fruit and juicy balancing acids. As is invariably the case, this Caillerets will demand a decade or more of bottle age before it truly shows its hand. After the 2017 vintage, half of the parcel was ripped up for replanting, so quantities will be more than usually limited in the years to come.(WK)
Decanter
There will be less Caillerets in 2018, not because of frost or hail for once, but because half of the vineyard has been pulled out to be replanted. With its characteristic rose petal scents and chiselled minerality, this is sappy, bright and well balanced, with remarkable persistence on the palate. Drinking Window 2024 - 2032.
Vinous
The 2017 Volnay Les Caillerets 1er Cru, which lost 40 of its vines after Frédéric Lafarge pulled up the oldest 60-year old vines after the frost damage, has the most "exotic" bouquet amongst Lafarge’s 2017s. Although the Caillerets remains within that idiom of "classic Burgundy". The palate is medium-bodied, feisty and spicy on the entry with hints of dark chocolate and espresso that tincture the red berry fruit. I find the oak just leaving a mark on the finish that will be subsumed by the time it is in bottle. Very fine.(NM)
Burghound
Abundant spice elements add to the considerable appeal of the overtly floral nose of red and blue pinot fruit. Like the Mitans the middle weight flavors are both classy and sophisticated thanks to the fine-grained tannins shaping the intensely mineral-inflected finish that is Zen-like in its harmony and balance. Note however that this too is very clearly constructed to age and is a wine that will need at least 5ish years and should be capable of rewarding 15+.