2006 Meursault Village

Fichet's assistant Nicolas Gachon told me that the estate harvested very late in '07, with the grapes shrinking and gaining in concentration at the end. The Meursault Tessons came in with 13.8% potential alcohol, Gachon noted, but a number of cuvees were lightly chaptalized. The malos were finished at the time of my visit, but several of the wines still had a few grams of unfermented sugar, and Fichet was heating some barrels to get the alcoholic fermentations to finish. According to Gachon, the wild yeasts didn't work particularly well because the fruit was so ripe, and he expected the wines to finish with around two grams of residual sugar. The result may well be a rather extreme style for this domain, but one that should work well thanks to the minerality of these sites. Fichet did more lees stirring this year than with recent vintages-weekly at the beginning and every two weeks more recently.

Fichet is one of several Meursault growers whose brilliant 2005s tipped me off that this was a special vintage for this village. In fact, Fichet loves this vintage. "It's everything I look for," he told me. "The wines have minerality, precision and energy, not to mention very good acidity," he went on. "It's exactly the style of wine that I've been looking for for years: taut and minerally." Fichet compares 2005 to 2002 but notes that the newer vintage is even better, as he's a more experienced winemaker now. In 2006, Fichet started harvesting on September 21, which he now believes was too late. An "electrical storm" on September 22 quickly changed the grape skins for the worse, he told me. But Fichet emphasized that he practiced a strict selection, eliminating the most affected grapes. Yes, the fruit was very ripe, but no wine reached 14%. The '06s will be more facile, and probably best suited for enjoying on the young side, he added.