1997 Meursault Les Perrières 1er Cru

In late May, Jean-Francois Coche still was musing about the crazy weather conditions of 1998. "We had the first frost on the hillside since 1945, and the first serious sunburn since 1947," said Coche, who removed 10% of his Corton-Charlemagne grapes with tweezers for fear of getting a burnt taste in the wine. And if that wasn't enough of a challenge, a helicopter carrying out vineyard treatments crashed into his Corton-Charlemagne plot during the summer, destroying 45 vines. Coche, reliably conservative when it comes to rating vintages, describes 1998 as "une bonne moyenne " But the average for Coche is better than exceptional for most white wine producers of the Cote d'Or. Although the fruit came in with slightly lower sugars than in the previous year, Coche did very little batonnage as the wines already possessed enough fat following the extended alcoholic fermentations.

Coche did almost no batonnage with his '97s, a set of wines he describes as fat and charming, but less minerally than usual. The malolactic fermentations were finished by the beginning of April, leaving wines with good average acidity, according to Coche. In contrast, Coche stirred the lees of his '96s "like I've never done before," and a few of the '96s did not finish their malos until December of 1997. In fact, I was only able to sample three finished '96s; the other wines were still on their finings in preparation for a July bottling and were impossible to taste. Those that I did see were among the potential superstars of the vintage. I rated these wines highly last year, but not highly enough.