1998 Mazoyères-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes Grand Cru

The past couple of years have brought lots of new developments for the ambitious Christophe Perrot-Minot. In 2000, he purchased the sizable Pernin-Rossin domain in Nuits-Saint-Georges. He vinified some of these grapes in 2000, including the Nuits-Saint-Georges Richemone and Vosne-Romanee Champs-Perdrix, while selling off the rest. Perrot-Minot recently constructed a new cave as well as additional space for storing bottled wines. There is also a new temperature-controlled vinification facility for the wines from the new domain. Perrot-Minot best '98s have turned out well. "The problem in general with '98 is the tannins," said Perrot-Minot. "By doing a green harvest, growers could get a bit more ripeness and avoid having green tannins. But there wasn't much margin for error." Still, he prefers the '99s for their balance and more fully ripe tannins. But he also noted that these latter wines seemed a bit more fragile during the vinification, and it has been necessary to keep a lot of carbonic gas with the wines during their levage (Represented by Russell Herman, Berkeley Heights, NJ; importers include V.O.S. Selections, Inc., New York, NJ)

Christophe Perrot-Minot produced an average of just 25 hectoliters per hectare in 1998, and barely 20 h/h in his grand crus, due in large part to oidium, which was widespread in vines hit by spring frost, and to millerandage. The wines, he says, are tannic due to the thick skins of the grapes (i.e., a relatively high skin-to-juice ratio). The '98s here were developing slowly in barrel, and Perrot-Minot planned to bottle at least a couple of them two or three months later than usual. The extremely ripe '97s, all at least lightly acidified, were bottled last April and were aged in a slightly lower percentage of new barrels than the '98s. (Represented by Russell Herman, Berkeley Heights, NJ; importers include V.O.S. Selections, Inc., New York, NJ)