2000 Meursault Les Tillets

Yves Boyer describes his 2001s as "pungent enough [Boyer description of a wine with a good but not excessive level of volatile acidity], with sound balancing acids but a bit less volume than the 2000s, which had a tendency toward superripeness." Still, he added, grape sugars were as high in '01 as in the previous year, in large part because Boyer did not start picking chardonnay until eight days after the ban de vendange The 2001s, most of which needed a racking (which Boyer planned to do in late June), were tricky to taste at the beginning of June. Boyer continues to do a few special bottlings without fining or filtration for North Berkeley Imports; he obviously likes the results, as he told me he moving steadily in the directly of not filtering his cuvees for other markets. (A Peter Vezan selection; importers include North Berkeley Imports, Berkeley, CA; Michael Skurnik Wines, Syosset, NY; Vintner Select, Cincinnati, OH; and Dionysos Imports, Lorton, VA; the higher prices shown in the ranges below are those of North Berkeley Imports, which in most cases has made barrel selections and had the wine bottled without fining or filtration)

Yves Boyer did a slightly longer debourbage post-fermentation settling of the wine] to make a finer style of wine in 2000, but insisted that the lees were healthy. He described the vintage as "a supple set of wines for medium-term aging, with lots of fruit flavors." In grape sugars and acid levels, they are quite close to the '99s, he noted. But the 2000s generally finished drier than the '99s, Boyer said, adding that in the last four or five years, it has been easier to get his wines to go totally dry with wild yeasts, possibly due to the longer decanting he now does following the fermentation. Even in the mid-'90s, the wines tended to finish with around two grams per liter of residual sugar, he told me. (A Peter Vezan selection; importers include North Berkeley Imports, Berkeley, CA; Michael Skurnik Wines, Syosset, NY; Vintner Select, Cincinnati, OH; and Dionysos Imports, Lorton, VA; the higher prices shown in the ranges below are those of North Berkeley Imports, which in most cases has made barrel selections and had the wine bottled without fining or filtration)