2009 Meursault Perrières 1er 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.

Consulting winemaker Nadine Gublin told me she did almost no stirring of the lees in 2009 as the fruit was already rich enough and acidity was low. She did very little debourbage, intentionally bringing a lot of lees into the barrel. My notes below are limited to those cuvees that had finished their malolactic fermentation by the time of my late May visit. The Prieur 2008s were even slower to complete their malos (I only offered a note on one wine in Issue 146) and late to be bottled as well. In fact, only three of them were finished by the end of May; the rest were slated for a late June bottling. The 2008s, said Gublin, were very aromatic from the outset owing to a surmaturite character that came from an element of noble rot. The wines are high in all the major technical components, with alcohol ranging from 13.5% to 14.5%, acidity in the 4.5 to 4.6 g/l range, and residual sugar between two and three grams in most wines. A few of them struck me as a bit extreme. (Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY) Also recommended: Meursault Clos de Mazeray (86).