1998 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru

The Ramonets' cellar was a construction site in June, as the family was finishing a major expansion of the vinification, barrel aging and bottle storage facilities. As sur place tasting would have been impossible until a few days after I left Burgundy, I will have to report on the Ramonets' '99s next summer. But the line-up of finished '98 whites, sampled in New York in mid-August, proved to be among the strongest sets of wines I tasted from this vintage. Ramonet best crus show complex but clear fruit and mineral flavors, plus middle-palate density missing in most '98 whites. Noel Ramonet, whom I ran into at the Caveau de Chassagne-Montrachet's wine bar on my last afternoon in the region at the beginning of July, told me that natural acidity levels were sound in '98, requiring very little acidification. Unfortunately, my sample of the Ramonets' new Chevalier-Montrachet bottling (they now get the Chevalier from Domaine Chatron in exchange for some Batard-Montrachet) was corked.

The Ramonets' cellar was a construction site in June, as the family was finishing a major expansion of the vinification, barrel aging and bottle storage facilities. As sur place tasting would have been impossible until a few days after I left Burgundy, I will have to report on the Ramonets' '99s next summer. But the line-up of finished '98 whites, sampled in New York in mid-August, proved to be among the strongest sets of wines I tasted from this vintage. Ramonet best crus show complex but clear fruit and mineral flavors, plus middle-palate density missing in most '98 whites. Noel Ramonet, whom I ran into at the Caveau de Chassagne-Montrachet's wine bar on my last afternoon in the region at the beginning of July, told me that natural acidity levels were sound in '98, requiring very little acidification. Unfortunately, my sample of the Ramonets' new Chevalier-Montrachet bottling (they now get the Chevalier from Domaine Chatron in exchange for some Batard-Montrachet) was corked.