2004 Chambolle-Musigny Fuees

Christophe Perrot-Minot is quite candid about his strategy for making Burgundy: take all possible steps to reduce yields and increase quality and price the wines accordingly. He routinely leaves six or seven clusters per vine, aiming for a crop level of 30 to 35 hectoliters per hectare. In 2005 he did a "pre-sort" two weeks before the harvest began to aerate and further concentrate the grapes and to get the most uniform ripeness possible. Best of all, in recent vintages he has figured out how to make superconcentrated wines without overextracting during vinification. The 2005s are consistently superb. "The year was easy," he told me. "The greatest year was also the easiest to make. The wines have better pHs and acidity than the 2002s, but they are similar in style and quality. In 2002 the fruit was riper but perhaps almost too ripe. The 2005s are very ripe but have more tension." Like a number of his colleagues, Perrot-Minot believes that the 2005s will never shut down completely. I should note that the overwhelming majority of Perrot's wines indicate "Vieilles Vignes" on the label. Of the 2004s I sampled from the bottle, only the Clos Vougeot did not show this designation, but Perrot-Minot emphasized that the 2005 Clos Vougeot would say Vieilles Vignes.

Christophe Perrot-Minot describes 2004 as "a good intermediate vintage. "He did an even stricter selection than in 2003. Following a trie in the vines, he spent many hours going through the fruit "berry by berry" on a sorting table, even though he had already done a severe green harvest. "Even if we just left six or seven bunches on the vines, we still had grapes that didn't get ripe," he explained. "And even though we picked late, until October 9, the last grapes didn't ripen completely, even if they were concentrated by sun and wind. "He then did a very gentle vinification, with just one pumpover per day and a total of only two or three punchdowns per tank, as he did not believe that the tannins and seeds were completely ripe. As elsewhere, 2004 here is really a "vintage of the juice. "Perrot's 2003s are splendid, with deeper colors and more freshness than the overwhelming majority of wines I tasted in November. But the 2004s are every bit as impressive for their vintage.