2001 Meursault Les Tillets

Yves and Marie-Cecile Boyer profess to be extremely happy with their 2001s, describing the vintage as "a good if not great vintage possessing slightly better acidity than 2000 but also being rather exotic and in some cases, a bit heavy". When I asked what other recent vintages might be a good comparable, Yves nominates 1997 because of its tendency to be forward yet reasonably well balanced and it should have similar aging capabilities, which he suggests is about 10 years. As a group, the Boyer 2001s are not as good as the 2000s or the �99s but some wines bit it's not far behind either.

Yves Boyer was in the midst of an extensive cellar expansion at the beginning of June. He told me that due to the construction, the cellar temperatures were lower than normal in late winter and spring, and thus the malolactic fermentations went more slowly. This was probably a good thing," Boyer told me, noting that the aromatics in 2002 were especially pure. Boyer's 2002s finished with residual sugar in the very dry 1 to 1.5 grams-per-liter range, which is not freakishly low for white Burgundy but nonetheless is lower than many 2002s from his neighbors in Meursault. Today's yeasts are working better," explained Boyer, who emphasized that he uses only wild yeasts for the fermentations. I tasted the North Berkeley bottlings of Boyer's 2001s, except for the Meursault Genevrieres and Puligny-Montrachet Caillerets, for each of which there is only one bottling. (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 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)