2006 Gevrey-Chambertin Clos Saint-Jacques 1er Cru

Eric Rousseau made it clear that he considers 2007 superior to 2006. "The wines have more material and density and beautiful purity of fruit, not to mention excellent balance," he told me. He noted that he normally finds his Lavaux Saint-Jacques and Mazy-Chambertin to be the disappointing wines in the context of his cellar, but not in 2007. Crop levels ranged between 30 and 38 hectoliters per hectare in 2007 and 2006 (Rousseau typically leaves seven bunches per vine when he green-harvests), and he tossed out roughly the same percentage of rotten grapes in both years, eliminating this fruit in the vineyard rather than on a sorting table. The malos took place during the first three months of 2008 and the wines were racked in September.

Eric Rousseau describes his young 2006s as elegant and stylish. He expects this vintage to be agreeable in its youth, even if though he thought the wines were beginning to close down for the winter in early November, as the temperature of his cellar descended. Incidentally, estate-wide yields were in the 35 hectoliters-per-hectare range in 2007, 2006 and 2004, but more like 45 in 2005. Grape sugars in 2006 were virtually the same as those of the previous year. Rousseau told me that the late July hail was worst in some village parcels, as well as in Chapelle-Chambertin, Griottes-Chambertin and Clos de Beze. On the other hand, he had little problem with rot. He mostly had to pick off the dry berries at harvest time (the estate does not have a sorting table, since Rousseau prefers to eliminate lesser fruit in the vines), and the yield in Clos de Beze was ultimately just 15 hectoliters per hectare.