Vin d´émotion – basics 101

I started working with the term and concept Vin d’emotion a bit more than 5 years back when a small group of friends sat together in Vosne-Romanée to define what a truely emotional wine should offer.

I have been working on understanding and refining the definition of Vin d`emotion ever since that day. It is a work in progress … but we are almost there …

The emotional wine – the elements

There are many factors that determine if a wine becomes a vin d`émotion. To better understand, I have just made a short listing … with the most important points. Please note many of these effects are simultaneous…. i.e. they can non be separated 100% … but for the purpose of explaining … we try.

Terroir

In my mind, the terroir is one of the important components, as some terroirs just have more energy, tension and vivacity. The terroir is the soul of the wine … and without a great terroir, there are no great wines. Lesser wines can, however, shine if the rest is 100% in place. The tråerroir is however the core, and (normaly) is to a large degree unchanged year after year.

Sepage and clones

To me, the sepage – clone … massale selection .. is an important parameter, as the different clones react differently to the weather and the terroirs. This is also a core parameter, and is not changed often … 50-year-old vines are pretty normal. This is quite overlooked but can definitely be a great influence… just look at the 2023 vintage where the Pinot Droit struggled with the high yields. More about the sepage will come..

Basic ripeness … weather

The basic ripeness is a result of weather and the external settings. The core of this is, of course, the basis ripeness given by the weather and the vintage, including the viticulture. This is the basic timing … when sugar ripeness, acidity is taken into account and adjusted on the rough scale. This is mainly related to the last year … hence in recent times.

Note, however, that the last ripeness in this context is related to the phenolic ripeness. This is not entirely correct as sugar-ripeness (normal fermentation) and the phenolic ripeness sort of happen simultaneously… but with the phenolic ripeness at the very end … sort of!

Phenolic ripeness is Vin d`émotion

The harvest time and the phenolic ripeness are very closely related … as the finetuning of the phenolic ripeness primarily is adjusted by moving the harvest time. This is the key … to finding the optimal phenolic ripeness.

The ripeness process can in principle not be separated … but it is useful to see the phenolic ripeness as the last step in the ripening process …

The phenolic ripeness = Vin d`émotion