2000 Meursault Le Poruzots

Like a number of his neighbors in the village, Remi Jobard feels that the 2001 harvest in Meursault produced slightly denser wines than the previous year, "but in the same register of aromas. There were fewer and smaller grapes, and thus more concentration." Jobard noted that two-thirds of his vines are trained according to cordon royat which is very sensitive to cold weather during the flowering. Yields in 2001 were in the 40 to 45 hectoliters-per-hectare range, compared to 50 in 2000. Jobard told me he waited a long time to pick, watching most of his neighbors out in their vines. The grapes deepened in color and gained concentration; there was a slight browning of the skins and a moderate loss of acidity but no aromas of surmaturite or rot. So far, 2001 is the vintage of the century," he deadpanned. Vintage two thousand, Jobard adds, produced supple, aromatic, congenial wines that will drink well young. Until 1999, Jobard bottled his wines prior to the next harvest, but he is now waiting longer (the 2000s were bottled in January and February of this year after having spent their last four or five months in foudres so as not to have to filter. This way we get rounder wines whose fruit and mineral components marry better with the wood. The later bottling also brings more aromatic purity. The wines keep their freshness and their citric character longer and develop more slowly."

Remi Jobard describes his '00s as "fat, supple wines, like the '97s but with a bit more acidity." Sugar levels were higher here in 2000 than in the previous year. Jobard told me he did more lees stirring in '99 than in '00. "In 2000, the malos happened quickly," he explained. "Stirring the lees would have de-gassed them, which would have risked loss of freshness and possibly resulted in heavy wines." For the first time, Jobard bottled his '99s late, in February of 2001; previously he bottled in September. He is now able to prolong the levage by keeping the wines in cuve for another five or six months.