2007 Beaune du Château 1er Cru

According to winemaker Philippe Prost, the concentration of the pinot noir on the Cote de Beaune in 2008 came mostly from the wind (i.e., dehydration of the berries). As this was not a "natural" concentration, ripeness here is good rather than outstanding, and both malic and tartaric acidity levels were elevated, especially in normally cooler areas like Monthelie and Auxey-Duresses. On the Cote de Nuits, the maturity was more natural, he added. Still, there's a wide range of ripeness and concentration in 2008 by altitude. "The high wines are crisper and had a more classic maturity," he summarized. By the way, at the end of my tasting here, Prost showed me samples of Bouchard's top four white wines from the 2008 vintage, to make the point that 2008 is an excellent year here for chardonnay. They showed spectacularly, particularly the penetratingly mineral Chevalier-Montrachet and Corton-Charlemagne, and it appears that I underrated a few of these wines last spring.

Bouchard's harvest on the Cote d'Or normally is carried out over eight to ten days, as the house has a large team of pickers to draw on. But 2007 brought very heterogeneous ripeness, noted winemaker Philippe Prost. "In the early sites we needed to pick quickly, but the cooler sites required us to wait for a long time," he explained. "It was tricky because when we stopped for a day we had to worry about losing our pickers. It was a bad summer, but cool conditions saved the health of the grape bunches." The team started on the Cote de Beaune on August 27, but didn't finish the pinot noir until September 15 on the Cote de Nuits, where grape sugars ended up a bit lower. Still, grand crus like Clos-Vougeot and Bonnes-Mares were not chaptalized. In the end, added Prost, the skins were a bit thicker than they had been in 2006, and there was better purity of fruit. Bouchard's vertical press gives clearer juice, and the wines went into barrel with fewer "vegetal pieces," he went on. "This has allowed us to let the wines age a long time on their fine lees without racking them, since there's less risk that they will lose color. Ultimately, 2007 has more precision of fruit than 2006, some of which display dusty earth tones."