1998 Meursault Poruzots 1er Cru

Jobard admitted to producing a full 60 hectoliters per hectare in '99, as the grapes swelled at the last minute. He waited a full week after the official harvest start to begin picking, bringing in fruit with potential alcohol around 13.7% for the premier crus. Despite some rain, he described the '99s as fairly clean. Jobard does no debourbage and uses very little SO2 until the first racking, which rarely takes place until July; these practices, along with the tendency for the malolactics to be late in this cold cellar, make early tastings chez Jobard a bit of a crap shoot. I often pick up strange high tones, oxidation notes or suggestions of old barrel; often, these off notes disappear by the bottling. Jobard uses just 15%-20% new barrels for his wines, and I suspect he uses his barrels at least five or six times. Jobard describes his '98s as possessing average acidity, "like '97." The '99s, he adds, are even lower in acidity. Along with several of Dominique Lafon wines, Jobard's were the only '98s I sampled that were not in bottle by late spring.

A number of Jobard '98s were still in the early stages of their malolactic fermentations and therefore will require revisiting next year. Jobard describes the '98s as solidly structured wines of good quality; he began harvesting on the late side, just a day before the substantial rain of September 26, maintaining that the grapes weren't really ripe until then. The crop level was barely half of normal. Even in '98, Jobard did not cold settle the juice, nor would he consider blocking a portion of the secondary fermentation. "That wouldn't allow the aromas to express themselves," notes Jobard, who describes acidity levels in both '98 and '97 as "between low and average." Jobard says he also picked later in '97, and was able to get better ripeness without any dangerous loss of acidity.