Nicole Lamarche 2015 Echezeaux Grand Cru Cote de Nuits Burgundy France

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A deep pinky-purple colour with a flamboyant, heady yet still graceful nose, this wine combines delicacy and density. Very appealing. The fruit register is mostly raspberry and there is the requisite intricacy on the palate, perfect integration of acidity into the fruit, with low-key tannins behind. Very persistent.

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.

Domaine Lamarche was run by François Lamarche together with his wife Marie-Blanche since the death of his father Henry in 85 till his retirement in 2006.  Starting 2018 vintage, François’s daughter Nicole officially changed the domaine’s name to Nicole Lamarche.

The vineyard portfolio of this important domaine was created masterfully over three generations of the Lamarche family. Most of the domaine’s holdings are in the village of Vosne-Romanée. The jewel in the crown is the monopole vineyard of La Grande Rue, a 1.65 ha “sandwiched” between the vineyards of Romanée-Conti and La Romanée on the north, and La Tâche on the south. Interestingly, this fine vineyard was honored Grand Cru classification only in 1992 (this was not done in the original classification of the 1930s because of tax reasons…). This is the second smallest Grand Cru in the Côte d’Or (the smallest is La Romanée with 0.85 ha). The reclassification was not easy to achieve back in 1992, because for years the quality of the wines didn’t match the ones of it’s neighboring prestigious vineyard, mainly due to poor vineyard management and wine making.

The other domaine’s vineyards include fine parcels of Grands-Échezeaux, Échezeaux and unique mélange of Clos de Vougeot from three different parcels located at different parts of the Clos, an array of top notch Premier Crus in Vosne Romanée inc. Les Malconsorts, Les Suchots, Les Chaumes, La Croix Rameau (with recent addition of Nuits-Saint-Georges “Les Cras”). It took hard work over years to bring the domaine back on track, and the hard work was evident since the 1999 vintage and dramatically since the 2005, two years after Nicole completed her diplome in Oenology and joined her father in the domaine. Since 2006 Nicole is solely in charge of the domaine, and she got the freedom to run the domaine as per her own philosophy. The vineyard practice was changed to biological cultivation, the barrels’ suppliers were changed and less new wood present (maximum 50% for the top wines depending on the vintage), and the equipment in the winery was updated to modern standards.

Lamarche is now a top notch domaine, with wines expressing themselves through their terroir rather than power. This has been widely acknowledged, and quoting Clive Coats (MW) own words from his recent magnificent book “My Favorite Burgundies” – “This is now a three-star domaine”!

Sandwiched in between La Tache on one side and a combination of La Romanée and Romanée-Conti on the other, the 1.65-hectare La Grand Rue Monopole Grand Cru is one of Burgundy's most hallowed terroirs. Despite its legendary position, La Grand Rue was the latest of the Vosne-Romanée's Grand Cru vineyards to receive the designation in 1992, having been left out of the Grand Crus for tax reasons in the original 1930s classification. It is entirely owned by the Lamarche family, now run by the impressive Nicole Lamarche (you will see Domaine François Lamarche on bottles of the 2017 vintage and before - the domaine's name was officially changed in 2018), who has brought her family estate forward by leaps and bounds, earning the awed respect of many a Burgundy critic.

Nicole's dedication to organic farming and more judicious use of new oak (now a maximum of 50% new even on the top wines) has vaulted the Lamarche wines into the top tier of Vosne-Romanée estates, which of course is saying a lot in a village that holds some of the most expensive names in all of the wine world. Clive Coates remarked on the changing of the guard in his recent book, "This is now a three-star domaine!" Though the name only changed with the 2018 vintage, Nicole has been at the helm since 2006, so there a good many vintages out in the market now that bear her distinctive imprint. In addition to La Grand Rue, Nicole has excellent holdings in Echezeaux and the Clos Vougeot, as well as outstanding 1er Cru and Village-level parcels.