2000 Meursault Le Tesson

Fichet, who rents all his vines, recently purchased a house with a humid, temperature-controlled cellar on the Route Nationale in Meursault and now has the working space to keep his wines in barrel longer if a vintage calls for such treatment. Actually, the new cave replaces five tiny cellars, and Fichet told me that the consolidation of all his wine into one cellar saves him two months a year in extra labor. Fichet describes his 2001s as "minerally, elegant, fresh wines with good material and very good acidity - between '99 and '00 in quality." There was more rot than in 2000, he admitted, and a severe selection was required at the time of the harvest. Fichet was still stirring the lees at the end of May, and planned to do it right up until he racked the wines for the first time in September. Fichet are typically strong wines with lovely purity of flavor, in which ripe, harmonious acids are buffered by strong, chewy extract. (Domaines et Saveurs/Jeanne-Marie de Champs; importers include USA Wine Imports, New York, NY; Glazer Wholesale Distributors, Dallas, TX; Fine Vines, Melrose Park, IL; A. Bommarito Wines, St. Louis, MO; and The Wine House Limited, San Francisco, CA)