1998 Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru

Tasting in this cellar the spring after the harvest can be tricky, as the wines here tend to develop slowly. In the case of the '99s, the malos had finished early, but the wines had been racked and sulfited barely a week prior to my visit, leaving me with a tasting challenge once again (the Maltroie-Crets and the Batard-Montrachet were impossible to taste at the time of my visit). Jean-Pierre Cournut, who has made consistently strong wines since the mid-'90s, reports that he had very good grape sugars in '99, and "average, ripe acids." The ban de vendange he said, was a bit late, and he began picking that day. Cournut felt that the '99s were still rather closed at the time of my visit, and thus "the terroir is not as strong as usual." (Domaines et Saveurs/Jeanne-Marie de Champs; importers include Glazer Wholesale Distributors, Dallas, TX; Fine Vines, Maywood, IL; The Wine House, San Francisco, CA; Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY)