2007 Pommard Les Frémiers 1er Cru

"Like a combination of 1993 and 1996, or of 1993 and 2001" is how Yves Confuron describes the 2008s here. "The wines have less tannic hardness than 1993 but less fruit than the riper '96s. It's a more serious vintage than either 2007 or 2009, and yet it also has a sensual side." Yes, the north wind blew, but it started on September 13 and the weather remained rather cloudy and cool, he went on, while in 2007 the north wind began on August 23 and the skies were luminous. "Two thousand eight is more a European than an American style of vintage," he summarized. As at so many other addresses, the malos here were very late, and I have limited my notes to those wines that had finished their secondary fermentations.

Yves Confuron, as is his habit, picked later than most of his neighbors in Pommard, beginning on September 8. With potential alcohol levels between 13% and 13.5%, the wines, he says, "have almost the same balance as the 2005s. There's a definite mellowness in the 2007s but their aromas are fresher. The '05s have more volume but they're a bit heavier." Through vendange entier, Confuron gets a long, "soft" fermentation lasting up to a month. I asked Confuron if it was possible that wines that seem clean in the early going might develop aromas of rot later on in bottle. His response: "This doesn't normally happen-usually only where growers use a lot of new oak to mask off notes at the beginning."