“Confuron vinifies with 100% whole clusters, and my years of experience with his wines, especially at Domaine de Courcel, suggest that he is one of the masters of this technique in Burgundy, as he normally manages to get an extra aromatic dimension without hardening his wines. ‘Vendange entier allows for cooler, slower fermentations,’ he told me. ‘You can retain floral elements and fresher flavors. With destemming, the temperature of the fermentation rises faster, and you can burn off the fruit.’ Confuron de-cuves by gravity over a period of two days; this step, in conjunction with the whole-cluster fermentations, means that the wines begin their élevages relatively clean, with a small quantity of lees, and can eventually be bottled - always on the late side - without fining or filtration …. One of the reasons he made so little wine is because he never uses fruit from the second set of buds. ‘It’s a bad idea,’ said Confuron. ‘The tannins are usually underripe, there are frequently off tastes, and this fruit has more malic acidity, which is then lost during the malolactic fermentation.’ And of course Confuron never destems his fruit, so the primary objective of his late picking is to get full phenolic maturity, which would be very unlikely from the second buds. Confuron replants only as individual vines die. He uses the small percentage of young vines ‘for sugar,’ which he says ‘supports extraction of the rest.’ All of the Confuron-Cotétidot wines are aged in 15% to 20% new oak. Explains Confuron: ‘If the steak is great, why add sauce?’”
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous |
