2003 Meursault Le Limozin

By coincidence, I went directly from a visit with Jean-Philippe Fichet to see Jean-Pierre Latour across the street along the Route Nationale in Meursault. Both of these winemakers made wonderfully precise 2002s and both of them spoke at length about the challenges of vintage 2003, especially in the village of Meursault Latour harvested much later than Fichet, however, waiting until September 1 to begin p icking. spanstyle='mso-spacerun:yes'> Some rain on the Friday night and Saturday morning before we started harvesting on Monday helped to invigorate the vines," he told me. Before then our vines were just not ready to be harvested. "Latour's 2003s, not surprisingly, are rich in alcohol-as high as 14. 5% for the premier crus. He has kept his cellar very cool to slow the development of the wines in barrel and was still stirring the lees every two weeks to enrich the wines. The 2003s have concentration and purity," Latour maintains, "and therefore the wines merit a longer elevage Latour presented me with samples from once-used barrels with a squirt of new-barrel juice added-a strategy he thought would provide the most accurate approximations of the ultimate blends. (A Patrick Lesec selection; importers include Classic Wine Imports, Boston MA Monsieur Touton, New York NY The Stacole Co. , Boca Raton, FL; Fine Vines, Chicago, IL; and Wine Warehouse, Los Angeles, CA)