2010 Meursault Les Perrières 1er Cru

"It was dry and hot until mid-July in 2011," said Thierry Matrot, but then it turned cold and wet for a month. Still, we had an unusually long 113 days between the flowering and harvest. We picked with potential alcohol between 12.5% and 13.2% and the acidity levels today are a very healthy 4.2 to 4.5 grams. The wines are not heavy; they have finesse, even if there's not a lot of fat or glyceral character. They taste very ripe but without having the characteristics of very ripe years." Matrot added that the growing season was much tougher for pinot noir. "Much more selection was necessary and we did very soft vinifications." Other than a very good Bourgogne Blanc that had been bottled the week before my visit, the 2011s were still in barrel, unracked, and Matrot was retaining maximum CO2 so that he could use minimal SO2. This looks to be a very good set of 2011s.

As he did in 2006 and 2008, Thierry Matrot picked later than most of his neighbors did in 2010. The crop level was down considerably owing to the hard winter frost in December of 2009 (Matrot had to replant 4,600 vines) and bad weather during the flowering. Acid levels are sound (typically between 4.2 and 4.4 grams per liter) in the post-malo wines but Matrot considers his 2010s to be riper than his 2008s (he feels that hail stress give a slight vegetal aspect to the acidity in '08). There was also a higher skin-to-juice ratio to the grapes in 2010, and the wines finished drier than the 2008s. Matrot believes that the 2010s will turn out to be enveloping, fleshy wines, rounder and more sensual than the '08s.