2007 Gevrey-Chambertin Les Champeaux 1er Cru

Jean-Marie Fourrier, who described 2007 as a nice surprise, quoted the old saw of an earlier generation: "Early harvest: late harvest; late harvest; early harvest." In other words, in a growing season featuring a late harvest, it's better to pick relatively early, and vice-versa. In 2007, he picked late in an early-harvest year. After August 25, he told me, the weather turned sunny and warmer, and the last two weeks of ripening before he began harvesting on September 9 were critical for the pinot noir. But he added that those whose vines were affected by mildew had to pick quickly "because problems with foliage meant the end of photosynthesis and galloping rot." As the local lab told him that 90% of the tannins of 2007 were extractible, he did four pigeages per day early in the fermentation, and allowed the temperature to mount as high as 34oC. But he stressed that he did a lot of "mechanical" extraction (i.e., by hand), rather than a "chemical" extraction via a long cold soak. Fourrier prepared each sample by assembling wine from three casks. The malos were very slow to finish, and most of the barrels here still had a bit of malic acidity left in early November. "As long as the wines haven't finished their malos, they're not vulnerable to volatile acidity and we can delay adding sulfur," said Fourrier. With his new fermentation room, Fourrier can do a longer debourbage and thus begin his elevage with better lees. And he can press at a cooler cellar temperature, which he says helps to avoid the loss of aromatics as well as the risk of an early malolactic fermentation.