2003 Morey-Saint-Denis La Riotte 1er Cru

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.

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.