2002 Corton Renardes

Girardin told me that he's now virtually out of the red wine business because he finds these wines too hard to sell.(He will offer just four or five cuvees beginning with the 2004 vintage.)"The reasonably good wines from good vintages sell well, but very good grand crus from medium-quality vintages sit in my cellar-even wines like the 2001s, which continue to get better and better."Girardin's 2003s had potential alcohols between 13% and 14% but although he acidified his white wines in 2003 he did not acidify pinot noir for fear of hardening the wines."The last time I acidified pinot noir was in 1994.I'd rather make wines that are a little moux than wines with a hard, metallic quality."Girardin, who is nothing if not flexible when it comes to vinification, carried out very short cuvaisons with no pigeage (13 days on average, or 10 less than usual), and used no new barriques.He prevented the malolactics from starting early by chilling his cellar to 10oC.Ultimately, the malos mostly finished in March and the wines had been recently sulfited and assembled when I visited in November.Girardin planned to bottle them all by Christmas, or earlier than he bottled his 2002s. (Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL)

There are always new developments chez Girardin.This year, Girardin reported that he will be making less red wine in the future and focusing on whites, which he obviously finds easier to sell.In fact, in 2003 Girardin will offer only three bottlings from the Cote de Nuits (Echezeaux, Charmes-Chambertin and Clos Vougeot), and white wines will account for 80% of his production. It's necessary to evolve,' said Girardin, who has chosen to concentrate on his own domain vineyards. (He purchased the Henri Clerc holdings in 2001 and will continue to be on the lookout for premier cru chardonnay parcels in the Cote de Beaune; in November Girardin had just purchased a hectare of Chassagne-Montrachet Abbaye de Morgeot, which he will make for the first time in 2004.)In his very cold new cellar across the train tracks from the village of Meursault, Girardin held the temperature at 50 degrees through the stifling summer of 2003. The worst enemy of wine is heat,' Girardin noted. The biggest advantage of my new cave is that I'm no longer at the mercy of different cellars with different temperatures.'For the first time, Girardin will be able to do the bottling by gravity.He compares the 2002 vintage to 1985:a suave, stylish group of wines with supple tannins and medium-term aging potential.He vinified with about 20% of the stems 'because they were ripe.'Compared to 2002, says Girardin, 2001 is less expressive now, 'but it is destined to age and will reveal itself only with time in bottle.It's more distinguished than 2000, with better material.' (Vineyard Brands, Birmingham, AL; some Girardin wines are also imported under the Baron de la Charriere label by European Cellars, Charlotte, NC)