2009 Meursault Charmes 1er Cru

Jean-Pierre Latour was one of several winemakers who expressed the opinion that bottling the 2009s early generally resulted in soft wines. He racked and assembled his 2009s last August, then moved them into cuves, with varying amounts of their lees "to prevent the wines from coming out hard and dry," and waited until March and April of this year to bottle. "The 2009s are not as concentrated as the 2008s, and I didn't want to lose fruit. It's an elegant vintage, while 2008 is massive. Two thousand nine is a wine of spring--fresh and exuberant--while 2008 is a wine of autumn. The '08s can be drunk early but they will also age well." I will hold off on reviewing Latour's 2010s, as these wines were in the middle of their malolactic fermentations at the beginning of June, and a couple had not even started. Not surprisingly, Latour said that this set of wines will also call for a later bottling, "or they risk being massive but not expressive." With so many grapes falling off at the end of the flowering, the clusters were well aerated and the wines are highly concentrated, he said, noting that the biggest losses in crop (up to 50%) were in the estate's old vines. (Chemin des Vins; importers include Bayfield Importing, Brooklyn, NY; The Stacole Company, Boca Raton, FL; Fine Vines, Melrose Park, IL; and Charles River Wine Company, Sturbridge, MA)

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)