Every winter, David Bowler and his team taste the new vintage from barrel; tasting at Arnoux-Lachaux was unanimously a highlight of our trip in 2016 and 2017. We’ve always been impressed when tasting at Domaine Arnoux-Lachaux; after all, they have some of the most prized vineyards in Vosne-Romanée and equally high-quality vineyards in Nuits-Saint-Georges. 

Questions always arise when a domaine is passed down to the younger generation.  Will the wines be as good? Is he or she ready to take over? How can she understand the terroir to the extent of her father – OR does terroir speak louder than the winemaker and there is no change to the wines? It’s an interesting question and it’s subject to opinion. The stakes are high when the wines that you are making are some of the rarest and most sought after in the world. In the case of Romanée Saint Vivant for Charles Lachaux, he only had one chance in 2012, as he only made a single barrel. Talk about pressure! Charles Lachaux visited the Bowler team in New York that year, and he seemed very calm about his first vintage. He explained that harvest was so busy, that he didn’t have time to consider an undesirable outcome.

It's no doubt that Pascal Lachaux must have gone through the same pressure when he took over from his father-in-law, Robert Arnoux, in the early nineties. Pascal worked side-by-side with Robert for more than ten years. The changes that Pascal made in the nineties were a natural progression at the time: pruning for lower yields, working the soil, destemming grapes 100%, and using more new oak for aging. The reputation of Domaine Robert Arnoux soared with Pascal Lachaux at the reigns. In 2010, Remington Norman and Charles Taylor MW said, “This is one of the very best domaines of an exceptional village.”

Charles Lachaux gives an immense amount of credit to his father for the work that he has done over the last thirty years. He said that if he has elevated the wines to a new level today, it is thanks to the health of the vineyards and the organization of the winery when he started in 2012. Today, Domaine Arnoux-Lachaux has 14.5 hectares. The vines average fifty years-old and the oldest, Nuits-Saint-Georges Clos des Corvées Pagets, were planted in 1921. In 2010, Pascal purchased a vertical press, making Arnoux-Lachaux one of just a handful of wineries using this type of press in Burgundy. They prefer it to a pneumatic press because it presses very gently and extracts less. In 2012, Charles’s first year, they introduced some partial whole-cluster fermentation and pleased with the results, they used a higher proportion of whole-clusters in subsequent vintages. In general, the 1er cru wines have up to 55% whole-cluster and the grand cru up to 100%. The amount of new oak has been reduced since 2012 as well. In 2015, a total of 15% new oak on village wines, 25% on premier cru and 40% on grand cru.

Father and son are very happy with the results. 

2016 Vintage Review from Vinous (January 2018): “This estate in Vosne-Romanée lost 60% of its production in 2016, mostly due to the April frost, making just 20 hectoliters per hectare overall… (Charles) Lachaux finds the ‘16s to be ‘purer and more traditional, with more terroir specificity and energy than the much denser 2015s.’ Still, 3.6 was the lowest pH in 2016.

The young Lachaux has made many important changes in viticulture and vinification since taking over the estate from his father Pascal. One of the most important involves canopy management: Lachaux now prunes tall (the fruiting zone is at a very high 1.7 meters) and a full month after the flowering, which makes for more leaves and enhanced photosynthesis, which in turn results in riper seeds in the grapes and enables the estate to harvest up to a week earlier than their neighbors. Grape sugars in 2016 were in the healthy 13% range and Lachaux chaptalized lightly only to extend the otherwise very quick fermentations. He vinified with almost the same high percentage of whole clusters as he had in 2015.”     – Stephen Tanzer