François Mikulski Pommard 2021

Frost cut Mikulski's 2021 premier crus by roughly two thirds, yet Bill Nanson's note on this village Pommard ends simply: that is a great Pommard.

The domaine's technical sheet for Pommard gives three figures: the parcels average 25 years, the vines are 100% Pinot Noir farmed organically without certification, and annual production is about 1,700 bottles. Fines, the importer in Japan, repeats the same vine age and bottle count on its 2021 page and lists the wine at 13% alcohol. The subsoil is fine river alluvium, which the sheet describes as poorer in limestone and therefore heavier and better draining. When Bill Nanson tasted the 2021 with François in July 2023 for Burgundy-Report, he recorded the fruit as three small parcels combined, all on the plain, the Cras portion quite stony.

The red ferments in tank for around fifteen days and then goes to oak for a minimum of twelve months, about 20% of the barrels new; the domaine's current web page adds four to six months in tank before bottling. This was the frost year: Terroir Journal records temperatures down to −8°C in the Côte de Beaune on 5–8 April 2021, a cool and slightly wet season afterwards, and a Pinot Noir harvest mostly between 18 and 27 September. François put it this way to Nanson: in 2021 the Bourgogne had the best volume, about two thirds of normal, the reds were quite variable, and the premier crus, already growing before the frost, lost roughly two thirds. He added that he likes 2021 very much.

The domaine dates from 1991, when François took over his uncle Pierre Boillot's vines under métayage; the Fines page notes a first vintage in 1992 and listings at Bernard Loiseau and Georges Blanc by the mid-1990s.

In the glass

Nanson (Burgundy-Report, December 2023) found more width and ripeness than in the Monthelie, a supple, finely textured wine with real depth. Raphaël Gimenez-Fauvety (De Corps et d'Esprit), whose 2021 note the domaine publishes on its own site, scores it 92–92+: cocoa and chocolate ganache, blueberry jam, crème de cassis, mocha, warm raspberry tart, soot and polished leather, a distant peony; with air, rose and violet. The palate he calls juicy and fleshy, raspberry with orange and mandarin peel, ripe red plum and morello cherry, the minerality arriving on the finish. Fines also lists Allen Meadows at 89 (April 2023).

When to open

The technical sheet gives ten to fifteen years of keeping; Gimenez-Fauvety suggests two to three years in the cellar for the 2021. Fines recommends serving at 16–18°C.

At the table

The sheet names braised red meat, game and very good raw-milk cheeses; Gimenez-Fauvety adds rabbit chasseur or guinea fowl with chestnuts, or a quickly seared steak tartare with pommes Dauphine.

Quick facts

Provenance

Sourced from the Japanese importer.

Sources: Domaine François Mikulski (website and technical sheet); Fines (Japanese importer); Burgundy-Report (B. Nanson); Raphaël Gimenez-Fauvety, De Corps et d'Esprit; Terroir Journal