2000 Nuits Saint-Georges Les Pruliers 1er Cru

By chance, I tasted at Chevillon this year directly after a visit at Gouges, and the differences between my two favorite Nuits-Saint-Georges domains were thrown into clear relief. The Chevillon wines, especially the 2000s, are more user-friendly in their youth; although these wines have track records for aging well, they do not generally display the early austerity of the Gouges wines. However, it occurred to me that in a vintage like 2000, the Chevillon wines should be bottled earlier than the second July, which is routinely the period for bottling at this domain, especially in light of the fact that the wines completed their malolactic fermentations by the end of February 2001. (Nowadays, relatively few Burgundy domains bottle their red wines more than 12 or 13 months after the secondary fermentations finish.)