Aesthetics of Intention

In the past 5-6 years of buying the wines of Domaine Lamy, I’ve had some admittedly uneven experiences, especially with young wines. Bottles from vintages 2004-2011 had all been stunning with 8-15 years of bottle age. Some young wines, the 2015 Chatenieres, En Remilly and 2017 Clos des Gravieres have been similarly stunning, a brilliant combination of textural generosity from warmer vintage conditions and lees with Lamy’s striking, dense structure from his incredible farming, idiosyncratic pressing and long elevage. While other young bottles, both from pre and post diam and wax transition have been extremely muted, almost neutral. I had a sense that Lamy’s wines needed longer in bottle to show well, particularly those after changing over to Diam and wax in 2016, but I was still quite confused about the variation between and within vintages.

Having bought this 14 Concis du Champs upon release, the first two bottles I’d opened were in this vein. My last bottle in 2018 was totally closed and unyielding, even under natural cork and tin capsule, so I decided to hide my remaining bottles away and return to them after a few years.

Having spoken to mutual friends, read and listened to interviews about the myriad experiments at the Domaine over the last 20 years, I was already quite familiar with many of the details documented in Fine and Rare’s recent piece about Lamy and his work. What caught me was a little snippet of a detail, a piece of insight to the personality and preference of Olivier that helped me understand the wines better. “With Lamy - who does not enjoy young, aromatic Burgundy”.

Though it doesn’t explain everything, this gave insight into the wines in their youth. Why so many bottles in cool vintages as well as those from 2016 and onwards, have given so little away in their early years post release. There are a few other members of a new guard of White Burgundy producers, JM Vincent and Lamy Caillat are the two who first come to mind, whose cellar work and outlook share many overlaps (foulage, long, firm pressing in Vaslin or otherwise, long elevage of 2 years etc.) in order to produce densely structured wines that can evolve to take on textural breadth and complexity for decades. But the other two, Lamy Caillat in particular, are much more expressive in youth, perhaps partially explained by the smaller format barrels used during elevage (classic 228L vs the 500L and some 350L of Lamy). From tasting bottlings of the same wine with different lengths of elevage, I’ve learned that whites can gain in tension, perception of dry extract and structure with longer time in barrel.  But as with so many examples in Burgundy, the personality of wines so often mirror the personality of their makers.

Things started to click in my mind when I read how Lamy doesn’t enjoy young aromatic White Burgundy. All the changes in the cellar over the last decade, moving to foulage, longer and firmer pressing, extending elevage with larger format barrels, using diam and wax at bottling, have clearly all been done to maximize the basis of acid, phenolic and dry extract driven structure and ultimately the ageability of his wines. From his experiments with high density viticulture, it’s clear that Olivier Lamy is not one to shy from pushing boundaries and extremes. I can see that this lack of expressiveness in youth is a very personal choice, part of his aesthetic, a byproduct and a reflection of his extreme desire to push the ageability of his wines as far as he can. These are wines of intention, in every possible sense.

I might be wrong, but it feels that Lamy is thinking down the line in terms of decades rather than years. I look forward to seeing how these wines unfold as they realize their potential in bottle.

A beautiful summer evening in Lijiang, sharing two stunning bottles with my vineyard manager over wood fired Neapolitan pizza

Tasting note:

After two muted, ungiving bottles in 2017/18, this is showing beautifully. Incredibly pure, detailed lemon zest and oil, but with emerging digestive biscuit umami, subtle, toasty pate a choux, sesame and popcorn. This, combined with a gentle grapefruit pith inflection, forms a wonderfully alluring sense of toasty reduction that frames the very pure lemon variations.

The toasty reduction is beautifully subtle and a wonderful part of a complex whole. I feel this is toasty reduction from time and lees rather than oak toast on its own.

So incredibly pithy and sinewy on the mid palate. Chalk dust tactility adds to a sense of being very dense and intense. The acid is classic Lamy, positively electric and searing, intertwining with the chalky, pithy cut. This lends an incredible sense of pulsing energy through the palate, driving the wine, its flavors and texture, into the back palate, lingering retronasally for a long while.

As I come back to the Lamy after a glass of the Galeyrand, there is a wonderful lemon zest crème fraiche viscosity that has emerged, adding further layered textural depth, breadth and complexity. It makes sense that this wine is just beginning to enter its first sweet spot of expressiveness, and speaks to Lamy’s outlook on how his wines should age - in decades rather than years.