2008 Meursault Charmes 1er Cru

Jean-Pierre Latour told me he prefers his 2009 red wines to his whites, as they are more complete. "The whites are pure and clean but not yet deep," he explained. Crop levels here were in the moderate 40 to 45 hectoliters-per-hectare range due to the limited number of clusters, or just a tad higher than the average in 2008. On this visit, I marginally preferred the 2009s to the 2008s for their purity. The 2008s went into cuves before Christmas 2009, about two months earlier than the 2007s had the year before. (Chemin des Vins; importers include Bayfield Importing, Brooklyn, NY; The Stacole Co., Boca Raton, FL; Fine Vines, Melrose Park, IL; and Charles River Wine Company, Sturbridge, MA)

Jean-Pierre Latour, always a candid source of information on the new vintage, maintained that the 2008s don't generally have the fruit or invigorating freshness of the 2007s but may be deeper wines. "They're concentrated, like the 2006s, but with less surmaturite," he told me. He was also convinced that growers whose vines carried heavy crop loads were not in a position to benefit from the three weeks of north wind that blew in September. "And because the concentration came from evaporation rather than true ripeness, there's always the chance that the sweet side of some wines could turn petrolly," he added. Latour had slow sugar fermentations (most of the wines ultimately finished with 2 to 2.5 grams per liter of sugar) and thus warmed his normally cold cellar to about 60 degrees during December and January, before bringing the temperature down to about 50 or 52. The malos, which can be quite late here, generally finished in March and the wines were sulfited at the end of that month. But they were still on their lees when I tasted them at the beginning of June, and Latour was still stirring the lees every three weeks as he felt the wines needed more complexity. (Chemin des Vins; importers include Bayfield Importing, Brooklyn, NY; The Stacole Co., Boca Raton, FL; Fine Vines, Melrose Park, IL; and Charles River Wine Company, Sturbridge, MA)