2001 Chambolle-Musigny Vieilles Vignes

Virgile Lignier bought a new vibrating triage table in time for the 2002 vintage, and he used it to eliminate the larger and less ripe grapes.He is now also able to move the fruit into cuve without pumping it.In 2002 he carried out a six-day cold maceration at 50oF, and did one punchdown and one pumpover per day during the fermentation.The material was riper in 2002 than in 2001, Lignier told me:the typical wine had potential alcohol of 12.5% and was chaptalized a half-degree.Lignier made 33 hectoliters per hectare in 2002, compared to 42 in 2001, but does not find a big difference in quality between the two vintages.The 2002s, he told me, should be medium-term agers.I liked the earlier vintage for its precision, but some tasters will prefer 2002 for its superripe, fleshier fruit.The 2001 crus were bottled on the late side, in May of 2003, the village wines three months earlier.At the time of my tasting, Lignier was leaning toward bottling all his 2002s in February.

Virgile Lignier, whose father previously sold his fruit to negociants began vinifying in 1996 and is bottling a higher percentage of the estate's fruit each year. The estate owns eight hectares of vines in Chambolle-Musigny, Morey-Saint-Denis and Gevrey-Chambertin, including pieces of three premier crus and a bit of Clos de la Roche. My visit here this year seemed well-timed, as 2001 looks to be the finest vintage to date for Lignier. I was more serious about everything in 2001, in the vines and in the vinification," Lignier told me. The tannins were ripe, though not as ripe as in 2002, and the wines show much purer fruit than my previous wines, partly because I used higher-quality barrels." (With the 2001 vintage, Lignier switched from almost all Rousseau barrels, which he feels lack finesse, to mostly Berthomieu and Francois.) Lignier describes his 2000s as best suited for drinking on the early side. I like my '99s okay, but the '98s were too hard." Lignier does a pre-fermentation cold soak lasting five or six days, but emphasized that he never goes for strong extraction, punching down the cap once a day and de-cuving quickly after the sugar fermentation is finished. The 2001s had been racked and assembled in cuve a month prior to my visit, and were slated for a January bottling (with fining but no filtration). This is yet another excellent source of Burgundy in Morey-Saint-Denis, a village that now has a very high percentage of estates worth pursuing.