2009 Montrachet Grand Cru

Richard Fontaine's take on the 2010 vintage was a bit different than the opinions expressed by his peers in Chassagne-Montrachet. "The wines are round and flattering, more like 2009 than 2008," he told me. "The 2008s were a lot more taut in the early going." Crop levels in 2010 were down an average of 20% for chardonnay, but Fontaine said that pinot yields were "even worse." He was in the middle of racking his 2010s when I visited at the beginning of June and he planned to bottle the new vintage, as usual, before the 2011 harvest. "People who put their wines in tank for six months just want to be able to take their summer vacation," he told me.

Richard Fontaine began picking on September 6. The malos were fairly quick and were completed by April 2010. The wines were racked in June and bottled in early September. Perhaps it is inevitable with a total of ten different Chassagne premier crus in the lineup, but in this vintage not all of the wines are markedly different from each other.

Richard Fontaine is not one to make early judgments of a new vintage. At the beginning of June, he told me he was just "starting to discover" his 2009s following the racking. "They seem a bit anonymous now, but they're strong and full," he told me. "And I don't think they lack acidity." Fontaine believes that they will be "mid-term agers." Interestingly, Fontaine reported that his 2009s generally finished drier than his '08s, which were bottled just before and just after the 2009 harvest. With more tartaric acidity in the wines than in the '07s, said Fontaine, some of the '08s needed a full 12 months "to marry." Incidentally, Fontaine made a point of telling me that he doesn't believe in drastically lowering the yields of his chardonnay. "This would lower the acidity too, which could compromise longevity. The wines can be sympa in the early years and then fall off a cliff." (Numerous importers, including Polaner Selections, Mt. Kisco, NY; Jeff Welburn Selections, Van Nuys, CA)