2002 Gevrey-Chambertin Les Cazetiers 1er Cru

Francois Faiveley began harvesting on August 20 on the Cote de Beaune, the house's earliest harvest in more than a century, because, he explained, the acidity in the grapes was falling rapidly.Due in part to a high percentage of tiny dried berries on the south side of the vines, the crop level was down more than 50% from the norm.Following a careful elimination of burned grapes that might otherwise have given the wines a pruney taste, Faiveley did less cold maceration than usual for fear of getting overly tannic wines, then macerated for three weeks rather than the typical month.It's tempting to say that some of these wines were picked short of optimal phenolic ripeness, but I sense that these wines have all the elements for long aging, even if some of them show some distinctly tough tannins today.Faiveley admitted that the 2003s will be wines for collectors, not restaurants, and that most of them will need 10 to 15 years in bottle.

Francois Faiveley is hardly alone in believing that the 2001s will outlast the 2002s. The 2002s will be better to drink in the next five or six years; we had more grape sugars in 2002, but the vintage lacks the acidity to be a long-term year,' he told me. The 2001s have more acidity, more of a spinal column, and will last longer.We had a September miracle in 2001, and great harvest weather that lasted into October.'He summed up the two years this way: '2001 is in the cabernet style, while 2002 is in the merlot style.'(Wilson-Daniels, St. Helena CA