Tasting Notes
Vinous 93+
Pale yellow with green highlights. Deeper and leesier on the nose than the Bienvenues, with ripe peach and hazelnut aromas complicated by sexy reduction. Large-scaled and powerful but not heavy, and totally different in style from the Bienvenues. Thick, plump and adamantly dry, with harmonious acidity giving shape to the wine’s very ripe stone fruit and pineapple flavors. In a rather masculine style and not yet explosive, rather like a barrel sample. The phenolic, firmly structured finish leaves behind citrus and mineral notes.
Anticipated maturity: 2022-2035
Robert Parker 90-92
The 2014 Bâtard Montrachet Grand Cru has a more powerful bouquet than the Bienvenue-Bâtard-Montrachet, very energetic with fresh pear, white peach and citrus fruit. The palate is nicely balanced but does not quite offer the detail and precision of the Bienvenue at the moment. It’s a grand cru that will hopefully up its game by the time of bottling, because on this showing, it is surpassed by the 2014 Bienvenue. My first ever visit to Domaine Leflaive was in 1997, my first ever in the strangest of places called Burgundy. My memories are vague, but it might well have been my first ever visit to the wine region — back then playing second fiddle to all-conquering Bordeaux. Burgundy was for those that could not afford Bordeaux at a time when Bordeaux was actually affordable. I think I met Anne-Claude briefly on that occasion, just to say hello, but it was somebody else dipping pipette into barrel. Some 18 years later, and this is the first time that I have visited the domaine, and the matriarch has gone. I cannot deny that it is strange, like visiting a house when the owners are out. Of course, they are not. I am met my Brice de la Morandie, one of many shareholders in the estate, the one who has grabbed hold of the tiller after Anne-Claude’s untimely passing last year. He cuts a very different figure: sartorially immaculate in tweed jacket, handkerchief neatly folded into breast pocket, cutting the figure of a businessman as well as winemaker (and there is nothing wrong with that). I am here to assess the wines and he is probably here to assess me and doubtless, other importers and scribes that will visit over the next couple of months.
Anticipated maturity: 2018-2030
JancisRobinson.com 17.5+
Broad and rich on the nose with some intriguingly mineral note – putty? – and great generosity even if not the most concentrated. Lots of pleasure. Lots of freshness as well as the richness. Long.
Anticipated maturity: 2020-2030
