Twenty Minutes in July

Louis Boillot’s domaine dates from 2002, when the family holdings in Volnay, Pommard and Gevrey were divided and he took his share — the fourth generation of a family whose name is attached to half a dozen estates across the Côte. He is married to Ghislaine Barthod of Chambolle-Musigny, and the two built a cellar together there in the mid-2000s; the Volnay wines are made in Chambolle, which is an unusual arrangement and one that seems to have done them no harm.

Les Angles is a small premier cru on the southern side of the village, and the house’s wines from Volnay tend toward the commune’s classic profile: perfumed, fine-boned, more silk than muscle.

The Year

2013 in the Côte de Beaune was the year that broke growers’ patience. It was the third consecutive vintage in which hail had destroyed a large part of the crop, and the storm of 23 July was the worst — twenty minutes of violence that crossed Volnay, Pommard, Beaune and Savigny and left some growers with a third of a normal harvest. The season had already been cold and late; the fruit that survived was picked at the beginning of October, the latest harvest anyone could remember.

The wines from what remained are not the blockbusters that scarcity sometimes produces. They are fresh, moderate in alcohol, red-fruited and fine, with the acidity of a cool year and, from the estates that sorted carefully, a purity that belies the season.

In the Glass

Opened at the office late on a February evening, a little over seven years from the vintage.

Medium ruby with a touch of development at the rim. The nose was classic Volnay — red cherry and raspberry, dried rose, a violet lift, a little sous-bois beginning to show and a stony minerality underneath. Nothing heavy in it.

The palate was light to medium in body, with silky tannins, bright acidity and a clean, focused line through the middle. The fruit was pure and a little tart, the way the year’s fruit was; the finish was moderate in length and mineral. A wine of finesse over power, from a village that specialises in that, in a year that gave it no choice.

There is a tendency to skip the hail years. This bottle was a reasonable argument for not doing so — the wine was small, but it was entirely itself. The domaine’s Côte de Nuits side, from another early and uneven year, is elsewhere in this archive: the Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Pruliers 2011.