2009 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru

The beginning of June was too early to venture judgments on this estate's 2010 white wines, as none of the malolactic fermentations had finished and some hadn't even started. "There was lots more malic acidity than in 2009," noted consulting winemaker Nadine Gublin. "The wines are very delicate and we didn't want to do anything that risks losing finesse. For example, we did not do any lees stirring." Gublin was not the only winemaker to tell me that the 2009s benefited from the long, cold winter of 2009/2010. "The wines found more structure after the malos," she said. "Before that, they were too facile, too varietal." At the beginning the estate thought they'd be bottling these wines early but in the end they did their normal long aging on the lees.