2002 Morey-Saint-Denis La Riotte 1er Cru

Christophe Perrot-Minot, who uses the "Vieilles Vignes" designation for most of his bottlings, has explicitly adopted the strategy of making highly concentrated wines and charging enough money for them to justify the reduced crop levels.In 2003, he started the harvest on August 27, and used two tables de trie, eliminating all the shriveled grapes "to get rid of any cooked aromas."He ultimately produced one-third of a normal crop.He did an extended cold maceration, then fermented a bit cooler than usual, using very little pigeage.The secondary fermentations were comparatively late at this address, finishing between March and September of 2004 depending on the cuvee.Perrot-Minot told me he acidified about half of his 2003s, but chose to allow the high alcohol to take the place of the acidity in the others.Perrot-Minot is one of several winemakers who told me that the village of Gevrey-Chambertin was favored in 2003, as the rain there in mid-August brought about a better balance in the grapes.

Christophe Perrot-Minot describes 2002 as a very clean harvest requiring no triage and a year that was easy to vinify. It's an archetype in terms of the raw material," he said. The wines were sufficiently rich that some cuvees did not even require pigeage In general, Perrot has been cutting back on extraction during fermentation:in 2001, he reduced the punchdowns significantly, relying more on "soft" pumpovers.With 2002, the cold macerations lasted no more than seven days, shorter than in previous years.All the 2002s were on their lees in November; Perrot planned to rack them only for the bottling. These wines are now among the very best of what I would call modern-style Burgundy. Note that Perrot-Minot uses the designation Vieilles Vignes on the majority of his labels. (Martine's Wines, Novato CA