Les Chaumes

The attractive fruit here opens out very well with a touch of tannins behind. It is well structured and is a fine, dependable Vosne-Romanée.
Jasper Morris MW, Berrys' Burgundy Director The bad news at Domaine Lamarche is that the 2011 crop is actually less than 2010. We have done our best to keep prices stable, though the price of La Grande Rue has deservedly increased this year. Everything else is good news; Nicole Lamarche, assisted by her cousin Nathalie, is steadily growing in assurance, delivering an excellent set of wines this year. She continues to reduce the amount of new wood used while the vineyards, which are now farmed organically, are getting the care and attention that they need. The future is in good hands.

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50-year-old vines help the Lamarches to make a delicious Chaumes. It has a lovely dark pink robe with a classy, understated perfume. Delicate red fruit notes appear on the nose, some raspberry, some quite floral. There is surprising intensity in the mouth with good acidity, but the fruit wins through.
Jasper Morris, MW - Wine Buyer

Harvest began 6th October, the grapes in surprisingly healthy condition given the weather, allowing Nicole to use some whole bunches. There is a tiny bit more wine than in 2011 and 2012 but a really poor flowering reduced the crop and spun out the flowering. In vinification, Nicole opted to extract less than in other years. The Grands Crus are sold in wooden cases.

Medium deep pink in colour, with a beautiful raspberry and alpine strawberry nose, this has good intensity, with fresh red fruit. The wine has a slightly firmer finish with some wood tannins but the fruit wins out. Nicole's elegant style shines through. Drink 2022-2030.
Jasper Morris MW, Wine Buyer

The Lamarches began on 10th September, picking over six days and realising better yields than in 2014. This year Nicole Lamarche has been able to make exactly the wines which she wants to make, avoiding deep extraction while using around 30 percent whole bunches. Do not expect dark colours and overt concentration, but if your taste is for elegant, floral, eventually ethereal wines then this is the place to be.

Les Chaumes’s more southerly position saved it from most of the frost. Very expressive and simultaneously understated, it’s stylistically akin to the village Vosne, but with all the elements dialled up to a greater, although not overpowering, intensity. Lovely, seductive. Drink 2022-2030.
Adam Bruntlett, Wine Buyer

Domaine Lamarche today produces 14 different wines from 11 hectares. Ancestors of the Lamarche family were already living in the village of Vosne-Romanée in 1740, though the domaine was really established in the early 20th century. Henri Lamarche, born in 1903, received La Grande Rue in 1933 as a wedding present. Henri was succeeded by his son François and now his granddaughters; Nicole in charge of winemaking and Nathalie on the marketing side. As well as more meticulous work in the vineyards, better barrel selection and a new cuverie (since 2000) have combined to make this a fine and consistent domaine. This was a vintage to truly deliver Nicole Lamarche’s ambitions. Already on a road to make the most delicate, ineffable expressions of Pinot Noir – organic, unfined and unfiltered – this year the quality and health of the fruit has allowed her to eschew new oak as well. There is a policy to use 30 percent whole-bunch throughout the range. For Nicole this is a spiritual vintage, the quintessence of Pinot Noir, whose core she has tried to express through the extraordinary collection of terroirs she has under her, and her cousin Nathalie’s, stewardship. But, tragically, frost has reduced the domaine’s total yield by half and their Les Suchots was practically wiped out with an 80 percent loss.