1998 Nuits Saint-Georges Les Vaucrains 1er Cru

"Nineteen ninety-nine is the departure point for our new style," Ambroise told me in November. In his spacious new vinification facility down the street from his house in Premeaux-Prissey, Ambroise uses a vibrating table to shake the water off the grapes, then moves the fruit to a second triage table to eliminate any rotten or underripe fruit. When he vinified in cramped quarters at his house Ambroise was forced to work quickly and "everything was done to excess," including cold maceration with SO2 and the frequency of pigeage Now he can vinify at his leisure, and as a result he is seeking less energetic extraction. Ambroise did only a three-day cold soak prior to fermentation in '99, and then punched down the cap just once a day. He is now able to work mostly by gravity, instead of pumping the wine, which is especially hard on pinot noir. Ambroise describes 1999 as his best vintage since 1990, thanks to "a great balance of sugars, acids and tannins." A bit of hydric stress allowed the grapes to retain good acidity (pHs are actually lower than those of the previous year, he told me) but grape sugars were still on the high side (as high as 14.5% in his Corton Rognets). Yields were in the 46 hectoliters-per-hectare range for his Nuits-Saint-Georges premier crus. Ambroise noted that his '99s tended to finish their fermentations with nearly two grams per liter of sugar, while the '98s were dryer. He compares the '98 tannins to those of '91, and feels they will resolve quickly. "Give the '98s two or three years before starting to drink them," he says. (Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, D.C.)

I arrived in a snowstorm at Ambroise's spacious new winemaking facility: tasting in this frigid cellar I wondered whether I'd be able to get my car back up the hill to the Route Nationale for my next appointment. These worries did not prevent me from appreciating the strong potential of Ambroise's '98s. Ambroise did a strict selection on a table de trie eliminating a good 20% of his fruit. The fruit got a cold soak lasting from four to as many as ten days (for the Corton) before the fermentations commenced. In '98, notes Ambroise, the fermentation temperatures did not exceed 32oC; the tenderness of the tannins in several of the '98s gives further evidence of the evolution of technique at this address. Ambroise describes his very rich '97s as less sophisticated wines, easily approachable for the mass market. (Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, D.C.)