Nadine Gublin, the winemaker at Domaine Jacques Prieur, feels that the 2009 vintage has the right balance.
Nadine Gublin, the winemaker at Domaine Jacques Prieur, feels that the 2009 vintage has the right amount of tartaric acid (which contributes to taste and color stabilization) for reds and whites, “so the balance between malic and tartaric is good and we don’t suffer from a lack of acidity.”
"The 2009s seemed too easy and tender at the beginning," said enologist Nadine Gublin, "but the reasonably late malos [mostly ending in May], thanks in part to the very cold winter, gave them more structure-a structure that was hidden at the beginning. The wines have been constructed during their elevage: they have taken on more thickness and tannic force." Gublin told me that the team began picking on September 8 and "took their time." She admitted to making the full allowable yields but noted that the phenolic material was strong and grape sugars were in the 13.5% to 14% range. The wines were still on their lees in barriques, unracked, at the time of my visit. (Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY)
(Full reviews after the jump)
The woman who really shattered Burgundy's glass ceiling is quiet Nadine Gublin, who generally tries to answer all questions about her wines by pouring you a sample.Gublin got her break in the late 1980s when Jean Prieur, then running his family's estate, Domaine Jacques Prieur, decided to take a year to sail around the world. Like many women in Burgundy, Gublin had studied oenology, but unlike most she was using her degree at a negociant firm that worked with Prieur. She earned respect for her work and became technical director of the domaine.
In 1997, Gublin was the first woman named winemaker of the year by France's leading wine magazine, La Revue du Vin de France.
"Certainly I was very proud," Gublin says, while pouring a taste of her Puligny-Montrachet "Les Combettes." (It is excellent.)
