2001 Meursault Tessons Clos de Mon Plaisir

The 2002s will give immediate pleasure, said Jean-Marc Roulot, adding that during vinification and elevage it has been necessary to privilege and protect the fruit. My 1999 vintage was great; it's to drink in 20 years," said Roulot. But 2002 is so good now, so seductive, we have to wonder whether it will last, and what it will become." Roulot reported grape sugars in the healthy but hardly excessive 12% to 12.6% range; those wines at the top of this range were chaptalized only to 12.8% or 12.9%. Roulot told me he crushes his chardonnay grapes because that releases acidity, which in turn facilitates quicker fermentation of the sugars. The 2001 Meursaults, which Roulot describes as "pure wines with good acids, though fragile," were bottled between January and March of 2003. Because a number of these wines were beginning to go "appley" in the barrel, Roulot finished their elevage in tank "to slow down their development."

Jean-Marc Roulot described the grape sugars in 2001 as "on the low side, about 12.2% to 12.7% in the village wines and 12.8% to 13% for the crus. The hailstorm on August 2 destroyed much of the vegetation, which in turn blocked the maturing process in such vineyards as Tessons, Luchets and Meix Chavaux." Roulot did a gentle pressing following the harvest and due to the fragility of the grape skins carried out very little batonnage Like a number of his colleagues in the village of Meursault, Roulot continues to view 1999 as the best of the recent vintages. The rain affected the village wines more than the crus in 2000," said Roulot. The result is that they don't have the purity or nobility of the '99s, not the same definition of terroir