2007 Nuits Saint-Georges Les Chênes Carteaux 1er Cru

"When you pruned for low yields in 2008, you could get fruit with much better maturity and less rot," said Dominique Laurent. "It was a vintage for the outstanding gardeners. Great vignerons made great wines, but even very good ones often had too much crop. My metier as a negociant required me to declassify a lot of my barrels." For example, Laurent will offer no Volnays under his flagship label due to hail. Laurent noted that he will offer some domain wines from vintage 2009 under the Domaine Laurent Pere & Fils label.

Christian Gouges was quite high on the recent 2008 harvest when I visited in November, telling me that his fruit came in with more sugar and more acid than in 2007. "The wines are balanced at a high level of richness," he told me. As to 2007, Gouges noted that he didn't have to do much of a selection, in part because he picked on the early side, "before the skins started to break down." Still, potential alcohols were between 12.5% and 13% and the skins were ripe. He chaptalized most of his cuvees a bit "just to give heat to the vinification." Gouges believes the 2007s are for drinking before the 2006s, especially those from the north side of the village, which he believes show less material and less tannic structure. Gouges noted that in the family's new cuverie, finished in time to handle the 2007 harvest, it's no longer necessary to pump the grapes after they've been destemmed, which means less bruising of the fruit. "We'll still make powerful, tannic wines but they should be less hard and more accessible in their youth." (Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL)

Laurent bought little in the way of grand cru in 2007, and declassified a lot of his juice-mostly from grapes that he thought were not ripe enough-into cuvee tradition bottlings, which I do not taste on my annual visit here, but which often find their way to the U.S. through the grey market. (Note that the wines described below will all say vieilles vignes on their labels, according to Laurent). "Two thousand six is my year," he told me. "Two thousand seven is much more irregular, but some wines are better than in 2006. Some are less ripe, while others are ripe but have low acidity. Two thousand seven is a millesime des jardiniers, but bad gardeners got a lot of rot. Incidentally, Laurent is aging a number of his 2007s in what he calls "half-year-old barrels," by which he means new barrels that first held his grand crus for six months. In some instances, wines in half-year-old oak were then racked into a second set of new barrels.