1999 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru

The 20th century went out with a bang for red Burgundy lovers, with the 1999 vintage producing copious quantities of excellent to outstanding wine.

From the outset, the 1999 red Burgundies offered a rare combination of charm and power. Most of the better wines were balanced and alluring from the start, but they are evolving very slowly and still have plenty of life ahead of them. While many of the ‘99s I sampled with the producers this winter have gone through sullen stages in bottle, most of them have launched into their periods of peak drinkability. If you own these wines – and especially if you chose wisely at the outset – you will be amply rewarded.

My visit to Domaine Dujac this fall came just a few days after vineyard manager Christophe Morin was tragically killed in a motor accident on the route nationale between Gevrey-Chambertin and Dijon. Jacques Seysses, who had for years credited Morin viticultural techniques for much of his domain's success, was still in a state of shock but was good enough to keep our appointment. Seysses described 2000 as having produced a large crop of patchy quality, as ripe as the fruit of the preceding three years but with modest structure. The wines show a strong red fruit quality, he noted, adding that Morin dropped nearly two-thirds of the crop in order to cut yields to the 40 to 45 hectoliters-per-hectare range. I also tasted three negociant village wines (from Gevrey, Morey and Chambolle), and particularly liked the Chambolle, which was more typical of its village than the Dujac bottling, which is distinctly a Morey-side version of Chambolle.

Literally days before the 1999 harvest began, in part due to the very low acidity of the fruit, Jacques Seysses purchased a destemmer that does not crush the grapes. "The acidity would have been too low if the stems had been included," Seysses explained. "It miraculous to have this kind of quality with such a high yield," added Seysses. "The fruit was even riper and more concentrated than in 1990; we added more sugar in 1990. But then there have also been a lot of improvements in viticulture-for example, we use green cover and no longer use herbicides." Yields averaged about 46 hectoliters per hectare in 1999, and just 30 in 1998, according to Seysses. "The '98s are more structured and less charming wines than the '97s; we may even eventually drink the '96s before the '98s," Seysses told me in November. "The '98s are preferred by the younger generation here at the estate, but my wife and I like the '97s better." Seysses was in the middle of racking his '99s for the second time in mid-November, so a few cuvees were tricky to taste.