2007 Meursault Clos des Ambres

The 2008 harvest brought a smaller and more concentrated crop than the previous year, said Arnaud Ente, but a lot of triage in the vines was required, as the weather was much more difficult, raising the specter of mildew, oidium and rot. Ente emphasized that he does not like any "aromatic deviation" in his white Burgundies. The Puligny-Montrachet Referts saw the most rot, but it was mostly of the noble persuasion, added Ente. Ente picked on the early side (beginning on September 22), with natural alcohol levels in the low 12s, "about like 2007," and told me he did not chaptalize. In fact, acidity levels and pHs in the fruit were also quite similar in the two vintages, but he noted that the pHs barely went down during the malolactic fermentations of 2008. Still, these two vintages finished with the lowest pHs ever recorded here. There's no doubting the precision of Ente's wines, but I sometimes wonder if the harvest here has become too early. On the other hand, the 2007s clearly gained in fat and volume with elevage, a development that Ente described as "the great surprise of 2007."

Ente, who has a history of early picking, started bringing in chardonnay on September 2 with potential alcohol in the 12% to 12.5% range. He describes 2007 as a classic year, with "acidity, tension and no excess heat: very interesting!" As the flowering had begun very early, the vines benefited from a long vegetative cycle, he told me, adding that grapes picked after September 5 were likely to have been in surmaturite. Not surprisingly in light of the early harvest date here, Ente's 2007s are carrying brisk acidity in the 4.5 grams-per-liter range (compared to 3.9 to 4.0 in 2006). Incidentally, Ente told me that his 2007s finished with about 1.5 grams per liter of residual sugar, and that his 2006s were even drier-in contrast to the reports of most other growers I visited this spring. Clearly, Ente's habit of picking early allows him to bottle comparatively dry wines. Not surprisingly, he prefers both 2007 and 2004 to the riper 2006 and 2005 vintages.