2004 Musigny Grand Cru

The 2004 harvest required very careful sorting, Philippe Drouhin reported, especially in the hailed-on areas but also to eliminate rotten grapes. "And of course we also had to eliminate chardonnay grapes affected by oidium," he added. "It's easy to discard the grapes that are obviously affected by hail," said Drouhin, "but the intermediate berries that don't ripen further after the hail are harder to spot and eliminate at the time of harvest. "Drouhin described grape sugars as moderate:in the low 12% range on the Cote de Nuits, with the finished wines at or a bit higher than 13%. Most of the 2004s were bottled before the 2005 harvest. In my tasting, the cru bottlings were considerably more successful than the village wines. (I found the village wines from Volnay and Gevrey to be peppery and only modestly ripe, while my sample of the Chambolle villages was too evolved. )The Drouhins had not yet decided whether they would offer any Clos des Mouches; it's possible that there will be a little for the domestic French market. For notes on Drouhin's very strong set of 2003s, please refer to Issue 119; I retasted these wines this winter and scored every bottle within a point of last year's samples, with the exception of the Bonnes-Mares, which was much sappier, thicker and more perfumed than the rather stunted bottle I tried last year, with a tactile, clinging finish, and merited a score of 92.