Domaine Trapet Latricieres Chambertin Grand Cru 2018 750 ML

The 2018 Latricières-Chambertin Grand Cru is a magical wine in the making, and readers might think of it as a more elegant, structurally refined version of Trapet’s 1999 Latricières. Wafting from the glass with notes of cherries, cassis, dark chocolate, coniferous forest floor and rose petals, it’s full-bodied, velvety and layered, with an incisive spine of acidity, lively acids and terrific concentration, concluding with a long, resonant finish. This is worth a special effort to seek out. The 2018 vintage has turned out brilliantly at this Gevrey-Chambertin benchmark, an estate that seems to go from strength to strength. Jean-Louis Trapet began picking on September 5 and retained a considerable proportion of whole clusters for vinification, reporting alcohol levels for the most part between 13% and 13.5%. Yields, he told me, were limited by the domaine’s high percentage of old vines. Deep, concentrated and exquisitely elegant, this is a remarkably consistent range in both style and quality, and while they bear the imprint of the vintage, they’re not dominated by it. Everything reviewed here comes warmly recommended.
Producer Information
Domaine Trapet is a wine company comprised of two estates, one in Alsace, the other in Burgundy. The company in its current dual-region configuration formed when Andrée Trapet inherited her parents’ vineyards in Alsace in 2002. Her husband Jean-Louis has run Domaine Trapet Père et Fils in Gevrey-Chambertin since 1990, when he took over from his father Jean. The latter property is one of the great historic estates of the Côte de Nuits. There are 16 hectares (39.5 acres) of estate vineyards, led by parcels in Le Chambertin (a very substantial 1.9ha), Latricières-Chambertin and Chapelle-Chambertin. The deep, concentrated wines from these grand cru sites are the flagship bottlings, but the Trapet Père et Fils portfolio also includes fine Pinot Noir from three premier cru and two village-level vineyards, as well as highly rated red and white Marsannay and Bourgogne Rouge and Blanc. The portfolio of Domaine Trapet-Alsace includes bottlings from five grand crus: Schoenenbourg, Schlossberg, Sporen, Sonnenglanz and the recently added Mambourg. Village wines (Riesling and Gewurztraminer) come from Riquewihr and Beblenheim. A multivarietal Alsace Blanc, A Minima, is the counterpart of a Bourgogne Passetoutgrains Gamay-Pinot Noir red.