2001 Gevrey-Chambertin Combottes

The irrepressible Laurent calls 2002 "my best year yet, an incredible vintage."It seemed to me that I tasted more of his new wines from barrel than in any past vintage, and I found the average quality impressively high. Among a mixed case of Laurent's 2001s that I subsequently sampled back home, there were some stunning wines, but a couple that should have been great-the Musigny and the Mazis-Chambertin "Cuvee B"-showed strong oxidative character and were downright puzzling.In November, Laurent told me that he generally prefers his 2001 Cote de Beaune wines, for their concentration and ripeness, to his cuvees from the Cote de Nuits, but I suspect he was hyperbolizing.Note that most of Laurent's wines say "Vieilles Vignes" on the label, but I have omitted this designation from my notes on the 2002s, except where Laurent made specific mention of it as we tasted the wines.

Dominique Laurent describes 2001 as "a very classy vintage, a bit like '78 and '85 but from a growing season with a more normal climate." Laurent's best bottlings boast the creamy sweetness (many of his wines come from ancient pinot fin vines) to support their high percentage of sexy new oak-in many instances his special "magic casks," which he makes from extra-thick Troncais oak staves. And the wines, judging from my tasting of a range of Laurent's finished 2000s, are more consistent today than in prior vintages. My suppliers are doing better vinifications now than ever before. Previously, in a great year the wines were great. But in lesser vintages, some of them could be meager. Now they're much more consistent." Laurent bottled his 2000s between April and July of 2002, a bit early by his standards, and expected to bottle the 2001s between June and September of this year, possibly after carrying out an extra racking "for the big boys, the crus that start in all new oak." Few eleveurs use extended barrel aging so effectively to fill out the textures and extend the finishes of their wines: the 2000s that I tasted in blind flights against their peers in January and early February were consistently the deepest and longest wines on the table. These wines also held their fruit for days in the recorked bottles.