2007 Vosne-Romanee Aux Brulees

According to Bruno Clavelier, his wines' pHs are always in the relatively low 3.45 range, as his grandfather never added potassium to his vineyards. "His was not an interventionist generation," Clavelier explained, adding that he also benefits from having a lot of old, low-yielding selection massale vines. The malolactic fermentations were very late in 2008, with the last wine finishing in October, and nothing had yet been racked at the time of my visit. Clavelier describes 2008 as "a vintage of balance: to make great wines we needed to start with ripe fruit and then do a gentle extraction." In his case, he did at least three weeks of maceration, using a soft pigeage every two or three days. As we tasted through the 2008s, Clavelier observed that this vintage seems like "a denser version of 1998." It's still early days, but I found more cut and penetration in the Clavelier 2008s than in the easier and more immediately pleasurable 2007s at this address.

The malos only finished during the summer and the wines had not been racked or de-gassed by early November. Clavelier told me that because the 2007s began life with a lot of malic acidity, they're a lot more refined today than they were at the outset. Plus, he went on, they may be expanded by the aeration that occurs during racking. The pHs in 2007 are in the 3.45 to 3.5 range, which Clavelier described as "not too high." He told me that 90% of his vines are selection massale, which he believes is particularly felicitous in a time of global warming, as the diversity of the plant material results in a wider range of ripeness and thus enables the fruit to retain high acidity, on average.