2000 Pommard 1er Cru

Following the difficult harvest of 2000, Bouchard sold off 20% of its domain red wine (especially the wines from young vines) and purchased 35% less grapes and wine than in 1999. Bouchard selected carefully, said managing director Bernard Hervet, but often the growers from whom the house purchases wine do not own triage tables. One of the major problems this year, according to Hervet, was wide differences in phenolic maturity within and between vineyards. In young vines in particular, grape sugars were often sound, but there was insufficient maturity of the skins and thus rather pale colors. Still, winemaker Philippe Prost carried out a gentler extraction than usual, doing no punching down of the cap after the first three or four days for fear of getting hard tannins. The 2000s were racked before the 2001 harvest, and Prost expected to bottle them early, between December and February.