2007 Meursault Les Perrières 1er Cru (Magnum)

I tried barrel samples of most of Jean-Marc Roulot's 2008s, but they were at various stages of their malos and I will wait until next time to offer tasting notes (a few early standouts in the context of their appellations were the Vireuils, Tessons and Charmes). "Two thousand eight was not an easy year for me," admitted the candid Roulot. "The south side of the village had more rot due to the rains, the north side had hail, and the top of the hill is lovely," he went on. "It's a very complicated vintage, and you never know much about the wines until the first racking." Roulot's 2007s are some of the finest wines of the vintage; in this era of premature oxidation Roulot describes them as "in principal, long agers." As I noted last year, Roulot felt it was a vintage that called for a long elevage and a late bottling, and his results speak for themselves.

Jean-Marc Roulot considers the young 2007s to be like the '04s but suppler than the earlier vintage, which he describes as rigorous and austere. "But it's really too early to make comparisons," he told me, adding that he distinctly prefers 2007 to 2006, which he finds too exotic. Roulot harvested chardonnay from September 5 through 13 in 2007, but brought in his top vineyards on the 7th and 8th. The vegetation was healthy, he said, and the fruit was able to gain maximum benefit from its last days on the vines in favorable early September weather. This is a vintage for late bottling-and for a longer elevage than the '06s, Roulot added: "The wines need to gain in fat, depth and complexity, and those qualities should emerge through barrel aging." (Kermit Lynch, Berkeley, CA; Parliament Wine Co., Atlantic City, NJ) Also recommended: Meursault Les Luchets (86).