1997 Meursault Goutte d'Or 1er Cru

Dominique Lafon describes 1998 as an extreme vintage for white wines, with total yields sharply lower due to frost and hail in the spring (Lafon produced just 120 barrels of wine in '98 (reds and whites), compared to 195 in '97 and 230 in '96). Concerned about the quality of the lees, he did a long debourbage and then was very selective about adding back a portion of the lees. Still, he told me at the end of May, the '98s show more fermentation aromas and less fruit than the '97s did at a similar stage of their evolution. The acids were a bit lower in '98 than in the previous year, but still average, according to Lafon. The '97s here are turning out well; Lafon describes them as more elegant than his '92s. Lafon did relatively quick fermentations and, although the lees were healthy, he did limited work with the lees as the wines were already round and intense. Still, the wines remained on their gross lees, protected by CO2 until they were racked in late July. The '97s, says Lafon, are finishing both drier and richer than the '98s.

When I visited this spring, Dominique Lafon was concerned about the potential size of the '98 crop, following damaging frost and spotty hail in some of his vineyards in April (Puligny Montrachet Champs Gains and Meursault Clos de la Barre were worst hit). He was not planning to drop any crop, expecting to get 30 35 hectoliters per hectare, at best, at harvest time. Lafon has never had a trio of consecutive vintages as strong as '95, '96 and '97, and these three years are quite different in style. Lafon says 1997 brought fruit as healthy as the previous year. The berries were almost golden in color, he explains; they gave some of the pear and quince flavors of '89 (Lafon '89s were some of the standouts in this superripe but often blowzy vintage), but also had a better acid balance. The '97s had not yet been racked at the time of my visit. Lafon planned to keep them on the gross lees protected by gas until July, but pointed out that he does less lees stirring now than in the old days. Incidentally, following the '96 harvest, Lafon slowed down the fermentations in an attempt to get more roundness and fullness into a group of wines with a tendency toward austerity. He stirred the lees until April. In '97, he took the opposite approach, allowing the fermentation to finish relatively quickly and stopping batonnage as soon as the malos began in January. One result of these techniques has been that the '96s generally finished with 1.5 to 2 grams per liter of residual sugar (a couple are even higher), while the '97s are in the relatively low 1 to 1.5 range.