1998 Savigny-lès-Beaune Aux Fournaux

This estate did a five-to-six-day cold maceration following the '98 harvest, said Claude de Nicolay, then kept the fermentation temperature below 30oC. The post-fermentation maceration was kept cool and short, she added, because the tannins had a tendency to get dry quickly. Claude describes the vintage as "very Burgundian: the terroirs are easy to identify. The pickers eliminated about 10% rotten grapes in the vines. The wines are pure, the acids are sound, the tannins are moderately ripe, the wines were mostly chaptalized about one degree." The domain used no new barrels to age either the '98s or the '97s. I have provided '97 notes only for those cuvees I did not taste and report on in finished form last winter.