2000 Puligny-Montrachet Combettes

The 2001 and 2000 harvests brought fruit with similar sugars and acids, Francois Carillon told me at the beginning of June. But the crop was a good 10% smaller in 2001 due to some cold weather during the flowering, and because July was warmer and drier than the previous year," he explained. Also, the vines were tired after two large crops. But the harvest itself took place under considerably cooler conditions in 2001 than in 2000." Carillon, who likes strongly soil-inflected, stony vintages best, prefers 1999 to both 2000 and 2001, describing the earlier set of wines as "less round and fat, but very minerally, more subtle and complex." The 2000s are also minerally, he adds, but in a fatter style. I got the distinct impression that Carillon harvested on the early side in 2001, getting very sound acidity to go with moderate grape sugars.

The 2000 growing season brought one of the all-time earliest harvests, according to Francois Carillon. Picking started on the first allowable day, September 11; previous early harvests were in '92 (September 12) and '76 (September 6). The Carillons did a longer decanting of the must than usual, then stirred the lees every two weeks until the end of the malolactic fermentations. Francois told me that the 2000s here were a bit lower in both grape sugars and acidity than the '99s, and tended to finish their fermentations with slightly higher residual sugar. The result, according to my tasting, is a rather easygoing set of 2000s, without quite the stony grip of the '99s. For his own part, Carillon describes the earlier vintage as more minerally and "a more typical Burgundy style."