2000 Chambolle-Musigny Fuees

Having recently purchased the old Pernin-Rossin domain, Christophe Perrot-Minot now has 14 hectares of vines and can offer an impressive range of wines from the most important villages of the Cote de Nuits. Like a number of his colleagues who originally attracted attention to their wines by using extractive techniques in search of color and power, Perrot-Minot says he using less manipulation and less new oak today, relying instead on vineyard practices like green harvesting to get riper grapes earlier and preserve terroir character. He was able to start picking on the first day of the 2000 harvest, and he believes that this allowed him to avoid the heaviness and surmaturite that characterized the '97s. Perrot-Minot still does an extended cold maceration by chilling the entire cellar down to 52 or 53 degrees. He also believes in chaptalizing a little bit, even when potential alcohol levels in the grapes reach 13%, in order to prolong the fermentation and get more gras and complexity. The current set of wines from this cellar offers a lovely combination of sweetness, purity and texture.