2000 Volnay Pitures 1er Cru

Boillot stopped punching down the cap relatively early in his fermentations in 2001. He also did much less pre-fermentation cold maceration for his cuvees from hailed-on vines. As of the time of my November visit, Boillot felt that the tannins were quite apparent, and he planned to experiment to see if fining would be a constructive step. He told me that, except for the hail, Volnay should have been favored in a firm-edged vintage like 2001, because the tannins here are normally suppler than those of Pommard and Beaune. The secondary fermentations finished quite late, and the wines had been racked into tank and sulfited about three weeks prior to my visit. (Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL)

"Two thousand was very difficult," said Jean-Marc Boillot. "We waited until September 18 to pick, then needed a strict selection on our triage table. This vintage was an appropriate punishment for those who work badly, following the easy year of 1999." Boillot added that the vintage favored Beaune and Pommard over Volnay, which produced atypically tough wines in 2000 despite the shorter cuvaison carried out here. Still, he noted that even the 2000 Volnays will be rounder wines after the bottling. Boillot '99s are highly successful. Do they perhaps resemble the 1990s, I asked him. "The '99s are silky wines of great richness, but also elegance. In comparison, the 1990s are almost too structured, too robust." (Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL)