2003 Echézeaux Grand Cru

Jeremy Seysses describes the family estate's 2004s as "good but not great. Of course, they shouldn't even be as good as they are. "The wines, he says, are a softer version of 2001, with some of the red fruit character and charm of 1992. The domain began harvesting a bit later than some of their neighbors, picking the hailed-on parcels in Morey-Saint-Denis early and then coming back a week later for the rest. Seysses emphasized that the 2003s will not be a vintage for early drinking. But he also emphasized that the objective of the vinification in the earlier year was to get sufficient structure without extracting excessive tannins. Incidentally, Seysses admitted to having problems with reduction in recent years, and he told me the estate would not release its 2003 Bonnes-Mares "until we know that the reduction is only temporary. We haven't fertilized our vineyards for a long time, and thus in a drought year we have overly low levels of nitrogen for high alcohols, so the yeasts are stressed and produce a lot of SO2. "In fact, Jeremy went on, the estate was racking its 2005s during the week of my visit to ensure less reduction in the wines. "Now we have to be more selective in our use of the lees. We're also changing our vineyard treatments to address this problem. "If the complicated purchase of vineyards from Domaine Thomas-Moillard goes through according to plan (Domaine de Montille is another part of the buying group), the Seysses family will soon be making a large quantity of Vosne-Romanee les Malconsorts and lesser lots of Vosne-Romanee Les Beaumonts, Bonnes-Mares, Romanee-Saint-Vivant, Chambertin and Chambertin-Clos de Beze.

Thanks to the ripeness of the stems, the Seysses family vinified virtually 100% whole clusters in 2003.Little pre-fermentation maceration was done, but the team did more pigeages than usual during the early days of the fermentations, then simply kept the cap wet later on.The wines were pressed early and went into the barrel with a bit of sugar yet to be fermented.I tasted this year with Alec Seysses, and Jeremy Seysses's fiance Diana Snowden, who originally came here as an enologist.Snowden told me the 2003s were very reduced in the early going, but were much easier to taste in the fall, even those that had not yet been racked.