1996 Vosne-Romanée Les Jachées

Bizot, whose house is across the street from Henri Jayer in Vosne-Romanee, does a vendange entier with the objective of carrying the fruit "direct from the vines to the bottle." He relies on wild yeasts, carries out a brief cold maceration, and does pigeage but no remontage(pumping over) during fermentation (total cuvaison lasts 16-18 days). Bizot uses a healthy dose of new oak. The '96s were still on their lees in November, and Bizot planned to leave them there until the bottling in March. Bizot's reasonable yields in '96 (in the 38 h/h range) brought higher grape sugars than the previous year, and most of his wines were chaptalized just a half degree. I tasted the '96 barrels that have been selected by broker Patrick Lesec; the wines will be bottled by hand without filtration.