1999 Meursault Village

Production was roughly similar in 2000 and 1999, but the styles of the two years differ, Ente told me at the end of May. "The '99s are riper and suaver wines, while the '00s are fruitier, more rectilinear. They're also higher in acidity and not quite as physiologically ripe as the '99s, and they can be hard to taste today, due to their strong acidity and lots of gas." Advice to bargain hunters: don't miss Ente Aligote, surely one of the two or three best in Burgundy, penetrating and pure in 1999 and remarkably glyceral and more exotic in 2000.

I continue to be bowled over by Ente highly concentrated wines, which offer a rare combination of layered richness and clarity of flavor. Ente practices a strict pruning to limit yields, then does a green harvest "if necessary." The malos in this cold cellar tend to be very slow and thus the levage is long. With the exception of Ente's freakishly good Aligote, all of the '98s were still in barrel at the end of June. Ente describes these wines as very clean, with no evidence of rot or oidium. A few of his '99s had not finished their secondary fermentations, and a couple were still fermenting their sugars. Worth special mention again in '99 is the Aligote, richer and deeper than should be possible in a wine with just 12.3% alcohol. Ente's Bourgogne Blanc is also uncommonly strong in both '98 and '99. These are wines to seek out.