Producer note: I met this time with enologist and winemaker Jérôme Faure-Brac as well as Véronique Drouhin who collectively noted that the 2015 growing season "wasn't nearly as difficult as the prior seasons and particularly so with our parcels in the Côte de Beaune. You had to be really careful pruning the vines as the accumulated effects from three consecutive years of hail in the Côte de Beaune had made many of them quite fragile. We also had significantly different yields as they were normal in the Côte de Nuits but quite low in the Côte de Beaune. One of the really nice things about the vintage is how clean the fruit was and given that the harvest weather was so clement we could basically pick each parcel when we felt it was ready, a luxury that isn't always available. While we didn't use whole clusters for every wine, we did use between 10 and 50% for many of them. Another interesting aspect of this vintage is how much the wines have changed over time as initially they seemed almost heavy and a bit flat at first but as the élevage progressed, they tightened up and actually became fresher and more focused. At that point we said that there was nothing further to be gained from keeping the wines in cask so we bottled the entire range between December 2016 and January 2017. I was seriously impressed with the quality of the Drouhin 2015s as their style for lighter and more elegant burgundies seemed to marry especially well with what is effectively a notably ripe, rich and concentrated vintage. While the Musigny is almost without fail excellent at this address, I also found the Clos de Vougeot, Griotte, Petits Monts and the straight Chambolle villages to be particularly fine. If you enjoy the Drouhin style then these are wines to make a special effort to find and cellar over the next 8 to 15 years. See also the associated Domaine Hospices de Belleville in the En Plus section for those Beaujolais reviews. (Dreyfus, Ashby & Co., www.dreyfusashby.com, NY, USA; Pol Roger Ltd., www.polroger.co.uk, UK).