2005 Chambolle-Musigny Fuees

"The selection was the key to the purity of the wines in 2006," said Christophe Perrot-Minot, who purchased a second destemmer and another sorting table for the 2007 vintage. "It was particularly important to eliminate the grapes whose skins were scarred by hail," he added, noting that 70% of the Chapelle and 20% of the Clos de Beze was affected by the late July storm. Perrot-Minot continues to back away from extraction and manipulation in his attempt to make wines with "more subtle aromatics and more differences according to terroir." His pre-fermentation cold soak is now done at a more moderate temperature, and in 2006, he told me, he did a total of just three punchdowns for each cuvee; in 2002, in comparison, he did three pigeages per day! "Henri Jayer said that to make great wine it's necessary to be lazy, to let the wine make itself," he said. "Of course, Jayer also did not believe in green-harvesting." In November the 2006s were still on their lees, unracked.

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.