2003 Chassagne-Montrachet La Maltroie

Coutoux continues to offer roughly the same group of negociant bottlings as in recent vintages, with his purchases split 50/50 between grapes and must. His 2004 fruit was picked on the early side, he told me. He finds these wines a bit more structured than the 2000s if a tad lower in acidity; the earlier set of wines, he noted, was easier to taste during the spring after the harvest. Coutoux believes the 2004s have more potential than the 2001s. He bottled his 2003s prior to the harvest of 2004, using somewhat higher levels of free sulfur due both to the nature of the vintage and to his feelings that his 2001s and 2000s were advancing too rapidly.

Coutoux, who is not a fan of the 2003 vintage for chardonnay, does not like to add tartaric acidity and thus added very little to his musts in 2003-"just enough to control the vinifications. "Alcohol levels for the 2003 crus are typically between 13. 5% and 14%. When I mentioned to Coutoux that a number of his neighbors told me that their 2003s are resisting oxidation well in barrel, Coutoux noted that this might be because so much SO2 was added to the musts in the first place. Coutoux doesn't do much cold-settling of his juice, but he doesn't do much stirring of the lees either, using this technique only in the early days. Still, some of Coutoux's 2003s were distinctly heavy and exotic at the beginning of June. span style='mso-spacerun:yes'> (New Castle Imports, Myrtle Beach SC