Comtes Lafon

Domaine des Comtes Lafon has the deepest and coldest cellars in Burgundy and they nurture some of the greatest dry white wines of Burgundy. Dominique Lafon is the leading producer in Meursault, producing wines of astonishing depth and complexity, yet supremely balanced as well. JASPER MORRIS MW

Dominique Lafon considers 2015 to be a great vintage for Burgundy’s red wines “and nice and appealing for the whites. They will never have the refinement of the ‘14s but they’re not heavy.” The Chardonnay grapes were very ripe but none of his parcels was over 13.5%, as Lafon started harvesting on August 27. Acidity levels were healthy, he added.

Like many of his colleagues on the Côte de Beaune, Lafon has taken a variety of measures in recent years to prevent premature oxidation of his wines. He is seeking to bottle "more backward" wines by working more reductively, racking his wines into stainless steel tanks earlier, rather than simply transferring them to another set of barrels. He's also racking without exposure to air and keeping more CO2 in the wines. His overall objective is "to control the amount of dissolved oxygen in the wines at every step," he told me, adding that his wines now go into bottle with just one part per million. High levels of dissolved oxygen at the time of bottling can quickly absorb free sulfur and leave the wines vulnerable to oxidation. Incidentally, Lafon has been using all DIAM corks since 2013, having recently adopted the new, extra-thick and long DIAM 30s for his top bottlings. STEPHEN TANZER