2007 Vosne-Romanée Cros Parantoux 1er Cru

Rouget described 2008 as "a particular year, with a difficult climate." It was hard to control the outbreaks of oidium and mildew and the good weather arrived too late. "We picked in good conditions but it was cold," he told me: down to about 40 degrees at night and in the upper 50s during the days. He eliminated about 30% of his fruit, with unripe grapes being more of a problem than rot. (Rouget actually told me that rot was more of an issue in 2009.) Rouget did a fairly long vinification of about 26 days, and the wines had been racked when I tasted them in November, this first time this had occurred since the 2003s. There was a lot of reduction, Rouget explained, and it was necessary to separate the wines from their lees. Rouget brought in his fruit with potential alcohol between 11.5% and 12.2% and chaptalized between 0.5 and 1.0 degree. The vegetative cycle was essentially over, he told me, and in any event he did not want to wait for further concentration from dry weather or wind, which he believes brings a loss of freshness and even a cooked character.

Rouget compares 2007 to 1997, describing the young wines as "typical pinot: attractive, fresh and persistent." He made only 33 hectoliters per hectare after tossing out rotten and pink grapes. Fermentation temperatures reached just 26oC, and Rouget noted that pHs are in the moderate 3.45 to 3.6 range. The typical wine was 11.8% potential alcohol chaptalized to about 12.8%. Rouget, always a candid judge of vintages and his own wines, believes the 2006s are cleaner wines that show their terroirs more clearly. They're a bit denser, he continued, even if they're showing their tannins today. And they're "truer, fresher expressions of pinot than the '05s," he added, describing the earlier year as "a vintage for snobs, with too much speculation."