1997 Meursault Luchets

Like so many of his neighbors in Meursault, Jean-Marc Roulot told me he did practically no batonnage in '98 because he felt the lees were not sufficiently clean. The growing conditions during the summer were difficult, with hail in late April and again in early July, and the worst oidium in years. Still, says Roulot, sun during the week before the harvest led to a concentration of grape sugars and acids, and the small yields helped the ripening along. The pHs after the fermentations were higher than those of 1997 but still in the reasonably healthy range. As I mentioned last year, Roulot has moved to later bottling in recent years: most of the '97s were bottled between December of '98 and March of this year. At the time of my visit, the '98 malolactic fermentations had mostly just finished (a couple wines were not in presentable condition) but the wines had not yet been racked.

Jean Marc Roulot, who took over full responsibility for winemaking at his family domain with the '89 vintage, began to experiment with later bottling in 1995. He then bottled most of his '96s between January and March of this year, because he felt that longer time in barrel would help round off the edges of these high acid wines. At the time of my visit, Roulot was leaning toward November or December bottling for most of his '97s but emphasized that he would remain flexible. Roulot was apprehensive in the days leading up to the '97 harvest because the grapes showed low acidity levels without really being ripe. "I took my time picking," says Roulot, who eventually was rewarded with thorough maturity of the fruit. Roulot generally does rather infrequent batonnage and did even less than usual following the '97 harvest. He also did not crush the grapes in '97, and as a result did a longer debourbage or settling of the must to allow the heavier lees to fall out. The fermentations started quickly due to the high ambient temperatures during the harvest, but Roulot kept his cave cold to forestall the malos in the belief that the wine needs to spend time on its lees between the primary and secondary fermentations. "These wines don't have the power of the '96s," says Roulot. "They are like 1994 but with more definition." I was impressed by both '97 and '96 chez Roulot: some of his lieux dit were distinctly premier cru in quality.