Variety: Chardonnay
From/Terroir: In the valley between St.-Aubin and Puligny, middle to top of a steep (40% grade) hill, facing south/southwest, shallow soil on hard limestone bedrock. La Chateniere, Saint Aubin, Burgundy, France.
Taste: The 2019 Saint-Aubin 1er Cru Clos de la Chatenière opens in the glass with scents of pear gunflint musk melon wheat toast wet stones and freshly baked bread.
Medium to full-bodied ample but controlled its concentrated core of fruit is underpinned by lively acids and elegantly chalky structure. This year as a flurry of early December snow fell outside Olivier Lamy opted to show his bottled 2019s rather than his 2020s from barrel - a choice I warmly endorse as wines evolve slowly in these cold cellars where larger vessels predominate and nothing is done to accelerate the maturation process.
Critical Acclaim
92-94 points Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
"Offering up aromas of nutmeg, pear, crisp yellow apple, fresh bread and smoke, the 2019 Saint-Aubin 1er Cru Clos de la Chatenière is medium to full-bodied, layered and chalky, with a bright spine of acidity and impressive structuring extract cloaked in an enveloping core of fruit. This is another serious, structured wine from Lamy. (WK)" (1/2021)
92-94 points Vinous
"The 2019 Saint-Aubin Clos de la Chatenière 1er Cru has a strict bouquet, citrus lemon laced with blackcurrant leaf. There is a focus here that is very promising. The palate is very well balanced with citrus lemon, apricot and light blackcurrant notes towards perhaps the prettiest finish amongst all of Lamy’s nascent 2019s. (NM)" (12/2020)
90-93 points Allen Meadows - Burghound
"A Chablis-like nose of quinine, iodine, green fruit, citrus and shellfish is cool and very restrained. There is more volume and richness if not quite the complexity to the medium-bodied flavors that deliver fine length on the balanced and saline suffused finish. *Burghound Outstanding!*"(6/2021)
Notes: As I wrote last year in 2019 yields chez Lamy were reduced by frost averaging around 25 hectoliters per hectare; yet the wines aren't defined by frost as they were for example in 2016 when an abundance of second- and third-generation grapes complicated the choice of harvest date. In the same report I described the wines as concentrated and textural with prodigious levels of dry extract and that was borne out in bottle: these are remarkable wines built for the ages and it's hard to think of anyone in the Côte d'Or who more fully realized the potential of the vintage in Chardonnay.
As my notes attest these are brilliant wines and it hasn't happened by accident: rather it's the fruit of 30 years' hard work. Olivier Lamy has conclusively smashed the glass ceiling that for so long has imposed upon the wines of Saint-Aubin. All the white wines are bottled under DIAM. - Wine Advocate
