2008 Meursault Clos des Ambres

Once again, Ente picked very early to retain acidity, beginning on September 1 and finishing on September 10. The harvest was beautiful, he told me, and the fruit ripened rapidly in very warm conditions at the end. The wines, which he described as juicy and forward, show good balance and should offer mid-term aging potential. Not surprisingly, these wines have healthy pHs and acidity (3.15 to 3.2 and 4 to 4.5 grams per liter, respectively). Ente told me he loves the 2007s but that he's not drinking them yet. "The 2004s are great now; this was a much easier vintage," he said.

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."