2010 Savigny-Les-Beaune La Dominode

I normally taste the new vintage of red wines in Jadot's massive, sepulchral barrel cellar, where this marathon routinely requires three or four hours. But it was even more intimidating to arrive this year to see 55 sample bottles laid out on a table. And that's far from the whole collection of Jadot reds in 2010, said Frederic Barnier, who will succeed long-time winemaker Jacques Lardiere when he retires at the end of this year (I'll believe it when I see it, as Lardiere is like the energizer bunny.) Barnier noted that grape sugars were typically around 12.5% in 2010, prior to a half-degree or so of chaptalization. All the wines were racked between May and August of '11, and will be racked a second time for the assemblage in March. The wines were kept in roughly 60% new oak until the first racking (a level higher than that of 2009), and are now in about 30% new barrels. Barnier noted that Jadot started harvesting on the Cote de Nuits on September 24, before beginning in Pommard, Volnay and Beaune, because the vegetative cycle was finished and the skins were beginning to wither. Fruit in the Cote de Beaune required patience as there was at least two more inches of rain here in August than on the Cote de Nuits. Yields were higher on the Cote de Beaune, Barnier added, "sometimes too much for the year, and the wines are generally not at the same level of quality."